Baron Paul Buysse Graaf Jacques Rogge Gerard ... - Vlerick Alumni

of the International alumni. The growth of E-
MBA he realized as well as the increased efficiency
of the E-MBA section are a beautiful heritage
for the new president.
Alumnus lifecycle
Martens’ successor, Dirk Bontridder, is active as a
Senior Manager in the container handling business
and is already member of the E-MBA board
since 2000. Encouraged by a lot of E-MBA members,
he decided to apply for the president’s
chair. The election took place on Saturday 4
September in the abbey of Keizersberg at
Leuven. Dirk Bontridder succeeded in convincing
the board with his program that aims to combine
innovation and execution excellence in the
coming years. As to set up a well-balanced program,
Dirk Bontridder did an analysis of the E-
MBA members and their respective interests. He
found out that the ‘alumnus lifecycle’ plays a
major role when alumni determine their activities
agenda.
The ‘alumnus lifecycle’ plays a major role when
alumni determine their activities agenda.
As a matter of fact, recently graduated alumni
have other interests than e.g. alumni who graduated
for more than 10 years. The alumnus lifecycle
consists of four stages and in every stage
Dirk Bontridder wants to offer adequate activities
to the E-MBA alumni.
The first stage of an alumnus lifecycle takes
starts during and immediately after graduation.
In this stage it is very important, first of all, to
motivate the students to become active alumni
by showing them the value of the Vlerick Alumni
network. In these early years, it is also important
to organize the right events as to maintain the
link between fresh alumni and the School, consequent
to the spirit implemented by the founder
Professor Vlerick. Two or three years later, the
alumni enter the second stage of the alumnus
lifecycle: in this period, the young alumni are still
in the ‘cocoon’ of their fellow students on activities.
Here, E-MBA will try to get them out of this
cocoon and get them involved with other alumni
so that they start ‘cultivating Vlerick’. In the
third stage, alumni get more realistic and start
to think about the professional advantages of
their membership: what is in it for them? Driven
by this professional agenda, they more often go
to business-oriented events. Therefore, the E-
MBA Alumni Section wants to organize events
fitting with this drive. Alumni in the fourth and
last stage are usually not looking for professional
advance anymore since they are in the
autumn of their career or already retired.
Nevertheless, they remain very valuable for the
Vlerick network because of their expertise and
know-how. Dirk Bontridder wants to keep alumni
of the fourth stage involved in the network for
the level of expertise they represent.
Innovation and execution excellence
The events that will be linked to the alumnus
lifecycle ought to be innovative and should be a
statement of professionalism. Dirk Bontridder
also strives for working together with the School
as much as possible on the E-MBA activities. For
instance, a new activity will be the ‘career
coaching event’ organized for alumni in the
second stage of their lifecycle. As a matter of fact,
a lot of alumni, who recently graduated, do not
obtain the results they had expected two or
three years after their MBA. The reason for this is,
in many cases, a lack of coaching about how to
discuss this issue and how to take a first step.
The first edition of the ‘career coaching event’ in
May 2005 (organized by E-MBA board members
Dirk Bontridder (r) succeeds Kurt Martens (l) as Head of the Executive MBA Vlerick Alumni Section.
Chris Van Der Auwera and Steven Vanherreweghe)
should bring some solutions by using the academic
know-how of HR specialist and Vlerick professor
Dirk Buyens as well as the expertise of
some alumni who are in the third or fourth stage
of their lifecycle. In this way, the School and the
Alumni join forces and the ‘fresh’ alumni get
easily integrated in earlier generations of E-MBA
alumni. MAIS, the international MBA seminar
under the lead of Niek Van Dierdonck, is another
event that is representative for the innovative
course of E-MBA. It is an event that is addressed
to the alumni in the third stage of their alumnus
lifecycle. In its first edition, top-notch speakers
from the academic, corporate and political arenas
(among others Jean-Luc Dehaene, Willy
Duron and Etienne Davignon) gave presentations
about the ‘Strategic and Operational
Consequences of the European Enlargement’.
The edition of this year is already being prepared
by the workgroup within the E-MBA board (this
time lead by Annelies Bulkens) and should again
be an example of the best of breath of Alumni
and School joined forces. A last key preoccupation
of Dirk Bontridder is a smooth cooperation
between the E-MBA section and the Vlerick
Alumni association itself. Dirk Bontridder conceives
the role of the section as a supporting one, a
kind of ‘think tank’, that tries to strengthen and
consolidate the Vlerick network with new, innovative
activities. In his opinion, the task of the
Vlerick Alumni association is to organize bigger
events like the Winter Reunion or the Vlerick
Awards, whereas the different sections ought to
organize smaller innovative activities like e.g.
the ‘career coaching event’. If their formats result
successful, the coordinating Vlerick Alumni association
can then consider organizing such an
activity on a bigger scale.
(DS)