YaleGALE.org

Welcome to the Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange website. YaleGALE is an AYA initiative that seeks the advancement of education through alumni engagement and leadership, fosters rich cultural understanding among participating universities, and shares best practices in alumni relations across institutions.

The program was pioneered by Yale and the Australian National University (ANU) both members of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) in 2008 with a delegation of Yale Alumni visiting ANU. You can learn more about the first venture by clicking on the link to the left.

Following the success of YaleGALE in Australia, the program expanded to Japan in 2009 working with the University of Tokyo and the University Management Initiatives Consortium with representatives from over 50 universities. YaleGALE hosted a delegation from Japan at the AYA Assembly in November 2009. In 2010, YaleGALE worked with universities in Turkey. In 2011, YaleGALE went to China to work with universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong and host the World Alumni Leadership Conference in Beijing. Now we are ready to visit Israel in February of 2012 and the UK in July 2012.

Why have we been invited to these universities? Because we - Yalies - are leaders in alumni relations, and foreign universities want to learn from us. Yale was the first college, in fact, to affiliate alumni by classes, to organize reunions, to establish regional clubs - not to mention the first to organize a representative alumni association!

Universities in the rest of the world have very little culture of alumni stewardship; they receive the bulk of their operating assistance from governments or corporate entities. With no tangible reason to be engaged, alumni are not compelled to provide for the next generation. With no underlying mission or reason to reconnect, alumni of foreign universities have not had reason to organize into class, club or school affiliations, much less the rich variety of shared interest groups now forming among alumni of American universities.

Building on the success of the World Alumni Leadership Conference that YaleGALE organized in Istanbul in 2010, our programs now begin with the World Alumni Leadership Conference in our host country. Participants have the opportunity to lead a workshop on an area of alumni relations experience and may be asked to sit on a panel with fellow Yale alumni or participate in other ways to share experiences of volunteering at Yale - experiences such as reunions, class dinners, mini-reunions, club activities, AYA assemblies, AYA board meetings, Alumni Fund programs, shared interest group activities - any and all such ways contribute time and talent.

In each alumni exchange we have the opportunity to transform the scope and breadth of alumni collaborations, and to share our gifts with the rest of the world.