Letter from the SOMAA President

Greetings Yale SOM Alumni,

The last few months have brought us many changes and challenges. Damon Danielson, has retired as SOM Alumni Association (SOMAA) President after ably serving us for the last 2 years. We have appreciated all of his efforts on behalf of SOMAA and I would welcome all to send him a thank you note to damon@damondanielson.com. Subsequently, I have been elected to replace him and am thrilled to have the opportunity to give back to an institution that has meant so much to me. I welcome any input from you and will look forward to helping SOM continue to maintain its unique place among graduate schools of management. My e-mail address is craig.paullin@psmindustries.com.

These are definitely interesting times at SOM with both the sharp downturn in the economy and a change at the helm of the school. I believe Sharon Oster is a very timely choice as Dean and she is well positioned to help SOM continue with the amazing transformation that was initiated by the leadership of Dean Podolny. Sharon will receive strong support from all elements of the SOM ecosystem, including Yale SOM faculty and staff, Yale University, our students, and our alumni. We all wish her the best in this new endeavor.

SOMAA continues to dedicate itself to serving the needs of our alumni community. We strive to create and shepherd useful initiatives that enable and encourage our alumni to actively engage with, contribute to, and find support from their relationship with SOM, Yale, and most importantly, one another. To this end, over the last 2 years the school has funded a very important tool — the new SOMAA web portal. It has been a most ambitious project and we feel it will likely be the best alumni web portal operational among our peer schools.

Our sincere thanks go to the Yale SOM administration for whole-heartedly adopting this SOMAA initiative and for bringing the team and resources together to create an outstanding web platform. Some of the most unique aspects of this portal will be its focus on enabling our alumni to communicate, problem solve, organize, learn, maintain, and enhance SOM relationships on a one-to-one, point-to-point basis. We will also have an enhanced and customized social networking experience for our alumni which will enable you to easily and effectively be part of this amazing Yale SOM community. For our regional leaders, you will now have the tools readily available to easily create and organize local events and to communicate with your local community members.

So how can you help? We will be launching a Beta-test phase of the alumni portal in the next few weeks and we would encourage you to volunteer to be part of this pioneering effort. By signing up as a volunteer, you will get the chance to be the first to visit and enjoy the site, get your profile updated, explore a number of the seeded Virtual Interest Groups, access many of the resources at SOM and Yale, and much more — while at the same time providing invaluable insight and suggestions on how the alumni portal can best serve the Yale SOM community.

We will be sending more information to you about the alumni portal and the Beta-test phase shortly, but in the meantime, if you would like to sign-up as a Beta volunteer, please contact yalesom@som.yale.edu. And please remember, if you are looking for a place where you can do important service, in the company of intelligent, interesting, and dedicated people, then please contact us to talk about how you can get involved.

All the best to you,

Craig Paullin
SOM '85
President
Yale SOM Alumni Association