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In this series, Alumni Podcasts Founder, Robert Curtis talks with professionals and thought leaders working in alumni engagement, advancement, development and community building. Each episode dives into the latest insights, trends and success stories with a range of experts from universities, schools, scholarship foundations and nonprofit organizations who are shaping the future of the industry across the globe.
The goal of this series is to share strategies and actionable ideas for Alumni Relations and Fundraising Professionals to drive results and establish deeper connections with their alumni.
Alumni Podcast is a media agency producing podcasts for schools, universities and nonprofits to engage their communities and give their alumni a voice. For further information visit: (https://alumnipodcasts.com/)
Hello and welcome to alumni podcasts. I'm Sarah, your host. And in this series, I'll be speaking with professionals and thought leaders in the exciting fields of alumni engagement, advancement, development and community building. We'll dive into the latest insights, trends, strategies and success stories with a range of experts from universities, schools, scholarship foundations and non profits that were shaping the future of the industry throughout the world. Thanks so much for joining us and enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on another episode of alumni podcasts. My guest today is Serena Mitchell. Serena is the communications manager at the Business School of the University of Sussex, and she brings over twenty five years of experience in the field of public relations and communications across various sectors. I'm really delighted that Serena is here to share her insights and expertise on alumni relations and why robust communication campaigns are really vital when building strong alumni communities. Serena, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Sarah. I'm really pleased to be here talking to you today.
Speaker 1:It's so lovely to see you again. I hope you've been well. Are you working from home today?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm at home. I live in Hove, next Brighton and am in my flat, which is on the 8th Floor. So I've got a fantastic view as we speak across the city. I can see the sea all the way to the South Downs and the Iron Age Hill Fort and Chanctonbury Ring on our beautiful South Downs.
Speaker 1:Oh, how fabulous for you. I love a good henge, a dolman, standing stones, megaliths of all types and other ancient sites. If I was there, I'd have my hiking boots on and I'd be straight over to the Iron Age Hill Fort.
Speaker 2:I went for a swim this morning.
Speaker 1:Oh, fantastic. Is that something that you do frequently?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a sea swim through the year. Yeah. No, it's good. It gives you a real boost. It's good for your immune system apparently.
Speaker 1:It certainly is and it must brush the cobwebs away particularly in the winter months. I think the last time we saw each other Serena was about four or five years ago, twenty eighteen or nineteen at the University of Oxford where you were giving a presentation at the GLS Alumni Relations Conference that I was producing for Graduate.
Speaker 2:That's right. I met some fantastic people there and it was great to give that talk about how I'd been able to use some of the planning tools that I used in the civil service when I was working in government communications and I was able to apply a lot of those skills and tools to the work I was doing in the alumni relations team. And so I gave a talk about how we launched Sussex Connect, our alumni relations platform. And yes, I taught people through how I use the, what we call the Oasis planning template to that launch.
Speaker 1:Yes, I remember it well, of course. That's how we first became acquainted during the launch of Sussex Connect.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, yeah, that's right. And now it's really grown. I've got colleagues now who take care of that and it's grown tremendously in those few years. But yeah, was exciting to be part of the launch team for that.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about your journey then in alumni relations and communications. Can you highlight some of the key milestones in your career, particularly your transition from central government communications to Alumni Relations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually I'm a Sussex graduate, so I've actually returned as an alumna to work at my Alma Mater. So I graduated Sussex. I did international relations and I graduated in 1990. And then I went off to work and teach in Indonesia and Java. I was teaching English at a language school and at an Islamic university.
Speaker 2:I think from there I could see communications has been a thread through my career. It's been that golden thread. I came back, I worked for social services for a while, but again that was direct working with adults with learning disabilities. And the emphasis there was very much on communication, communicating in different ways because a lot of people didn't have verbal communication. From there, I then went to work for a county wide charity, Sussex Disability Association, managing an information service.
Speaker 2:So again, being a charity, you had to wear many hats. And that's how I really got into sort of communications and PR, obviously managing an information service. We're dealing with queries coming in and having to get information out. And from there I moved to what became the pensions regulator, which does what it says on the tin regulates work based pension schemes. And I joined their public relations team as a communications and media officer, press officer, and then got my way up to head of media.
Speaker 2:And when I joined, we were one regulator. And then the government gave us new powers so that we could be a better and more proactive regulator with more teeth. And it was at a time when pensions were front page news. The Daily Mail was even I
Speaker 1:remember it well.
Speaker 2:Because a lot of companies were going bust at the time and big companies with big pension schemes and the pension scheme members were losing their benefits that they built up through their careers. And so we became this new regulator to tackle that. And so it was a really hot topic at national level. And so I led all the communications and media launch of the new regulator. So I was really immersed in this world of finance, pensions, pensions regulation.
Speaker 2:But it was interesting. A lot of people go, oh, it must be really boring. But actually it wasn't because we all come to retire, we hope at some point and pensions are important to us.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm sure many will agree with you, Serena. And after working in the pension sector, where did your career take you next?
Speaker 2:From there, I moved to HMRC in London. So that's Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. And I was working in the Central Whitehall office, just opposite parliament. And there I was embedded within what was then the Enforcement and Compliance Directorate, which that director alone had over thirty thirty thousand employees. And that was one of three.
Speaker 2:So we were big civil service department. And that was fascinating because it was all about obviously tax, but other things other than tax. So there was the customs element. You've got obviously income tax. The department I was looking at was dealing with the sort of more criminal ends of the world of tax, evasion and criminal behavior, so to avoid and actually defraud the government of tax.
Speaker 2:So that was really interesting. And again, I worked on big campaigns and worked with policymakers. We had a big central communications team, so a member of that professional outfit within government. So after eight years of commuting from Brighton into London, I needed to take a step back. I had caring, commitment, my mother who was aging and it just commuting into London does take it out of you, especially if you're doing a demanding job.
Speaker 1:Yes. And that's way before the era where work from home became the norm.
Speaker 2:We work in a hybrid world now, so there's much more flexibility. So I decided to move out of the civil service and then I just happened to see a job come up in alumni relations at Sussex. And I thought, why not? It will be a stepping stone. Give me a sort of a bit of a space to think what do I want to do next.
Speaker 2:And I applied and got the job and that's how I arrived at Sussex. And because I came and joined the alumni relations team as a Sussex graduate. So I was able to bring that passion that I still felt and love for Sussex because I made such good friends at Sussex. We're all still friends. So I've grown up with all the people that I studied with and went to college with from those days.
Speaker 1:I love the serendipity of how you stumbled upon the alumni relations job at Sussex. It's amazing how your passion and love for Sussex cultivated through meaningful friendships have really shaped your journey and led you to where you are now.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. So we have our own little Sussex alumni network which is our friendship network, but then I'd also been an engaged alumna. So whilst I was working in London, I was going along to Sussex alumni events in London. There was a series called the Sussex Conversation, which was a series of guest lectures and the panels on different subjects. And I went along to one and it was all about synesthesia and it really struck.
Speaker 2:I think this is what I have because I don't know if your listeners may not know synesthesia is a condition of the brain where you, so the most common manifestation is when people might read and they see colors, the words in color, or they'll hear a sound and they'll hear the sound as color, or they'll hear the sound as a particular taste. So that's a condition called synaesthesia. So I went along as an alumni guest to this event. And so I think that's what I have. And Sussex has a big research program on synesthesia.
Speaker 2:So as I took part in that and it confirmed what I thought that I am synesthetic. And since then, I've just, I've taken a part in lots of volunteer research projects within that particular field.
Speaker 1:That is really remarkable. Sorry to interject. Firstly, I had no idea that you have synesthesia. And secondly, how fortuitous that Sussex conduct research in this particular field. So the connection with Sussex, the Sussex Alumni Network really deepened for you and you had the opportunity to give back to the community by taking part in this research work.
Speaker 1:That really is remarkable. May I ask Serena if this is something that you've known about since childhood or did it manifest later in life?
Speaker 2:I think I knew that I had something that other people didn't experience, but I didn't know what it was. I just thought, oh, that's just me. So I can get what I call color washes. And then I see certain like days of the week in time and space. And each day of the week has a particular color, the same with months.
Speaker 2:So it was, it's just an example of how, if you're an alum and you engage with your university or maybe your school and you go along to their events that they put on, you can learn stuff and you can learn stuff about yourself, which is what I did. So, yeah, so having been an engaged graduate of Sussex, I felt in a good place to come and work for alumni relations at Sussex because I could then, when we were holding alumni events, I could relate and share that sort of history. I had a shared history already with the alumni that I was meeting, especially from my age group, a bit older, bit younger, we could reminisce. So that already made a good connection.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for that. Clearly you have a great deal of experience across many sectors in communication. As you said earlier, I think you said it's the golden thread that's weaved through your entire career path. You've mentioned working overseas after graduating, working in The UK in central government and then to Sussex where you are now. It's very obvious that your journey aligns perfectly with your vocation, Serena.
Speaker 1:And next I'd like to ask you about the rollout of the alumni engagement platform Sussex Connect which I played a tiny little part in when we worked together a few years ago and how your earlier experiences were really instrumental in creating a very effective launch plan and the impact that that's had on alumni engagement at Sussex.
Speaker 2:Sussex Connect was the platform that we subscribed to which enables peer to peer alumni networking but also alumni to student networking and mentoring. I think about six months or a year into me joining Sussex, we were ready to launch our, what we called Sussex Connect. I put together the communications plan, the launch plan for that. I applied having come from government, we use a planning tool called OASIS and it stands for objectives. What are your objectives for this communications or this campaign?
Speaker 2:Who is your audience? So what do they need to know, think, do? What is it about their behavior that you want them to change? For us, we wanted them obviously to sign up and get on the platform and then to start to use it. And then what was our strategic approach?
Speaker 2:How were we going to launch the campaign? Was it going to be across a mix of channels, digital, face to face, all that sort of thing. And then what were our key messages? So how do we want to promote this platform to our audiences? And then implementation.
Speaker 2:So that's where you've got your delivery timeline and actions. And then obviously success. How are you going to measure success? How are you going to evaluate the launch? Was it successful?
Speaker 2:So using that simple model, I was able to pull together a launch plan and we worked plan. And it's, we had to shift it. I think there was, I think GDPR was coming in at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's correct. We were all implementing the new GDPR regulations at that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think we had to do a few checks and balances. So I think that delayed the launch, but that was okay because I'd done all the planning, I just had to shift the timeline. So that's the flexibility of it. So I think we launched in the new year and I got our Vice Chancellor to support the launch and he was a bit of a public face for it. And we also then, we'd done a soft launch in the business school where I'm now communications manager and then we rolled it out across the rest of the university.
Speaker 2:And we've got thousands of members now, both alumni and students, and we know that they are connecting with each other. There's facilitated mentoring programs going on. We've connected in with our careers jobs board, so all the jobs that go through our careers team are uploaded onto the jobs board of Sussex Connect. We've had through it, I remember you have after launching it, I facilitated an alumni meet up in South Africa with some of what we call our volunteer alumni ambassadors. And we had some really fantastic guests coming along to that because Sussex in its early days in the 60s, we launched the Mandela scholarship for South African, Black South African students to come over and study with us.
Speaker 2:Leading members of what then became the new African Congress in South Africa came to study at Sussex. So that was an example of a really good attended alumni event that we facilitated overseas that I didn't personally travel to, but then we were able to publicize it and promote it and then do post promotion or post event communications all on Sussex Connect.
Speaker 1:I bet you found it very helpful during the Covid period that you were already, you had a digital platform, a forum where students and alumni can connect. Because I understand for many universities who weren't really in the digital space when it came to March 2020, they really had to pivot very quickly. And those that had like yourselves a digital community were in a better position, were in a more advantageous position at that time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So by the pandemic, I'd already moved into my communications role within the business school, but I know certainly my alumni colleagues and we help promote them because this is where communication team works really closely with the alumni relations team because we're running the channels that we get a lot of our messages out to our alumni. So you've got Sussex Connect, which is its own membership platform. But outside of that, you've got all the other social media channels such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn is really popular with alumni.
Speaker 2:Twitter, which is now X and Instagram is really good for storytelling. It's very popular with students. And we've noticed that alumni stories that we post on Instagram always do really well. So I think with the pandemic, what we did, obviously teaching worldwide went online, but we were hosting the alumni relations team was holding a lot of alumni events online and also alumni, I think they were moving into the sort of alumni alumni and business podcasts. So again, there was a big shift to a lot more online delivery and, but a lot of those events were well attended.
Speaker 2:So I think now we're back in a post pandemic world. Hybrid working, a mix of online and face to face is here to stay. And I think it's how now do we use those tools, especially with AI coming in. That's an area of interest that I'm moving into and we'll probably speak about that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I want to address that definitely because you mentioned specifically that you wanted to speak about AI in communication and alumni relations. So we'll definitely get into that in a moment. You've covered some of the strategies that you've implemented in alumni engagement. I didn't know about the Mandela grant, I have to say, which is fabulous. Are there any really noteworthy campaigns that you're extremely proud of?
Speaker 1:I think I remember you were chairing the Women in Leadership Initiative a few years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, was a colleague of mine in the alumni relations team organized that, set that up. But she asked me if I would chair. So that was an event that was held in London by one of our alumni. I think it might be Microsoft, but don't quote me on that because it was certainly in London at a big tech company and she worked there. So she was able to use their offices.
Speaker 2:So we met there and we had a mix of students. We'd asked business students to apply because we wanted people to be motivated to come to this event because we had some really senior leaders who were also Sussex alumni at that event. So we wanted students that were really going to want to be there to engage with them. So we had a little bit of a kind of an application process. We've got some great students to come along.
Speaker 2:They were MBA students, so sort of a mix of students, postgrad and undergraduate. And it was wonderful to share that conversation because it was all about how women, we had women that were at the top of their game and who spoke about their experience in having to climb that career ladder at a time where women, and we still are having to fight to get to the top, having to perhaps act more like men in a men's world. And I think there's a shift away from that. How can we be leaders as women, but as women, not, and perhaps we work in a different way and how we can embrace that. So the conversation kind of covered all those sorts of issues.
Speaker 2:And obviously, the students were learning a lot from these women who'd had fantastic careers and had a lot to share. So that was definitely a highlight. Another highlight in my alumni role was attending Beijing Chinese graduation. That was in 2019. And that we, business school, we have a lot of Chinese students.
Speaker 2:We have many students from other countries and backgrounds as well, but quite a large percentage of Chinese students. Pre pandemic, every couple of years, the university would host a graduation ceremony in China. So I was fortunate to attend the Beijing one and it was fantastic. I'd never been to China and yet I'd studied actually when I did my international relations degree, we were studying Chinese history and the history of the revolution. So to actually go there and stand in Tiananmen Square and go to the Forbidden Palace and the Temple Of Heaven.
Speaker 2:It was absolutely incredible to actually experience it firsthand. And it was so wonderful to see all our graduates come back for graduation. So my role then was to plan some alumni events around that, which we did, working with the team based in China. And then we went over to Hong Kong and co hosted an alumni event there. And we had, again, some fantastic alumni come along and I was fortunate to spend some time with alumni.
Speaker 2:Outside of the event, I met with one chap who was volunteering for a homeless charity where they go out and I went out with him on what they call a night walk, group of volunteers going out. You see, I saw a side of Hong Kong I wouldn't have otherwise. There's so much homelessness there where people are working but the cost of living there is so expensive. They're working but they can't afford a roof over their head. So they're sleeping in parks and there's whole communities that we met that bed down for the night in parks.
Speaker 2:So we were going around giving them basic supplies, which are perhaps harder for them to get hold of. And so it was a privilege to go out on that and just see this other side of Hong Kong. And I wouldn't have done that without the alumni relations aspects of my work. So I feel very privileged to have made all these fantastic connections and to have these experiences.
Speaker 1:I truly appreciate that and understand it. Wow, what an amazing experience. You mentioned featuring alumni stories to inspire others, which I am in complete agreement with you. Storytelling is a huge part of what we do at Alumni Podcasts. So how do you decide, how do you source and feature your great alumni stories?
Speaker 1:And what role do does celebrating these successes play do you think in fostering a sense of belonging?
Speaker 2:Definitely, we know that telling the story of the business school and obviously the wider university through the voices of our people is what resonates with others, either fellow alumni or current students or prospective students. So I work closely. We now have an Alumni Relations Manager at the Business School called Ling Ling Zhang and she's fantastic. And we collaborating with her now to plan a series of alumni stories across the year. We have a blog site on our website, and that's where we do this sort of more feature length articles and interviews with alumni.
Speaker 2:And we want to celebrate the alumni that working within our sort of fields of specialism as a business school. So in terms of our research, we're really strong in sustainability. We do a lot in the sphere of innovation. So how do we find alumni that can illustrate those themes through the work that they're now doing? So we work with them to plan our content, find she helps find alumni that she wants to cover as a story.
Speaker 2:We might also be doing that ourselves. Sometimes we get alumni getting in touch with us saying, we've just done this. Would you like to somehow tell our story? So we'll follow-up leads. And then it's my team that will do the interview and do the write up and then publish that.
Speaker 2:And then also with things, we're starting to look at doing more award nominations. So that was another highlight of when I was in the role, putting forward alumni nominees to the British Council every year does study abroad. That's a series of alumni awards and events which is global celebrating alumni that have come to study in The UK. So we got some winners through that. We had some fantastic stories that came out of just seeking nominees to put forward for that.
Speaker 2:So I think actually having a plan, communications plan around awards and how do we put our alumni forward for awards is something new that we're evolving within the business school with our alumni relations team. So we've got the stories, we've got the awards, then we've got alumni in business, So we have an engagement manager who often is looking for alumni that will come in and be able to talk to business. We've got alumni that will come back and talk to our students. We have a series called Make It Happen where we invite alumni to come in on a panel and talk about their career journey. So we tend to get more recent alumni in because then current students can relate to them more perhaps than somebody who's had a career for thirty years.
Speaker 2:It seems that, oh, that seems such a long way off. Whereas if you've got somebody who graduated maybe two, three, four years ago, but you perhaps got a mix on the panel, it feels more tangible, it feels more achievable for students who are just about to go out into the world of work.
Speaker 1:It seems from what you've told me, you have a really multi layered approach to community building at Sussex. You've really mentioned so many different initiatives that you've got running and have run over the years. What would be the key kind of words of wisdom you would give for professionals who maybe are just starting out in an alumni relations or advancement role and they want to build, start to build something like you have at Sussex? What would be some of the key factors, the key points that you would advise them with?
Speaker 2:I think know your audience. Sussex, our alumni span the world. They've come to Sussex. Sussex is 60 years old now, over 60 years old. So still a relatively new university, but older than some.
Speaker 2:And so we've got a real range of alumni now. So those that are now retired, that studied with us right at the beginning to those that had just recently graduated. So you can start to segment your alumni into different kind of groups. So understanding what those different alumni segments want. What do they want from you?
Speaker 2:What do they need from you? What do you want from them? What do you need from them? Really to get that audience insight, think is crucial and I think that's something that universities could do better and more of. Obviously universities will be surveying their alumni on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Then what are you doing with that data? How are you using it? What is it telling you? And then honing and tailoring your alumni relations programs to meet your audience needs. And also perhaps how are you wanting to change their behavior?
Speaker 2:Let's say for example, you've got an alumni who are not very engaged, how do you reach out and contact them and start to pull them back into your community and then move them along the journey to become a really engaged alumna? So you can have people like me right from the start who are really engaged. They want to be in touch with their university. Now I admit for probably a good twenty years, I wasn't really thinking about Sussex but I hit a certain age and I was like, oh, Sussex is feeling really nostalgic. So that's a key point.
Speaker 2:At what point do people want to start to think they get nostalgic for their youth? So they want to reconnect with the organizations that connect them back to that period of their lives. So I think what do young recent graduates want? I don't think when I graduated, I wasn't aware of an alumni program. There probably wasn't something so well developed.
Speaker 2:It's a more recent thing in The UK, but now it's there. How do you get young graduates to feel? And that's a message we get out at graduation. You might be graduating Sussex, but you're still part of our community. We're trying to get that message out to students right from the start.
Speaker 2:You're joining Sussex but you're part of Sussex for life now if you want to be.
Speaker 1:What I'm hearing from other universities and schools in fact is the importance is personalization when you're reaching out to your alumni of different ages and segmentation in all your outreach, in your email campaigns, in perhaps your newsletters, in your messaging that we've got now a new, completely new generation of students. The gen Zs will start to graduate. The landscape looks very different in the world of work and the world in general than it did when people like you and I graduated university.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. And then which are the right channels? So our young graduates are digital natives. So what are the channels that they're using that you best reach them on?
Speaker 2:I think that's key. So we're really understanding the channels that they're using. And then I think good planning. Alumni comms campaign is a comms campaign. So alumni teams should be using communication tools and techniques if they're not already.
Speaker 2:If you're launching something new for alumni, put together a good comms plan at the start as I did for Sussex Connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you have a brilliant track record. Excellent advice, Serena. And I would agree with you that an alumni comms campaign is synonymous with any type of comms campaign to cultivate and build strong relationships and convey effective messages. So let's talk about the big thing that's on everyone's lips right now, which is AI. Do you think that universities are progressing swiftly enough to take up AI and the power that it yields?
Speaker 1:And what about you? Are there any specific AI tools and technologies you've already found useful in alumni relations, PR planning, data analysis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's really this year, obviously it was only last, it was only a year ago, wasn't it? Certainly at the business school, we're embracing it. Obviously, for the teaching side, faculty are having to get to grips with it because students are using it. So what does that mean for essay writing and assessments and all of that? So that's a whole piece of work that's being looked at.
Speaker 2:It's wonderful for data analytics. If you subscribe to ChatGPT Pro version, you can get a plugin which will then allow you to upload lots of data and ask it with clear prompts to analyze that data. It'll do it in an instant. So it's a real time saver. At a PR level, I've recently went along to a day's training on AI and PR run by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
Speaker 2:And it was brilliant. And the trainer just really knows his stuff. He was saying even in the world of PR, there's still only a few early adopters that are really getting into it, rolling up their sleeves, getting immersed in it and seeing how these tools can be applied to the work that they do. So it was reassuring to think, actually, I'm a bit ahead of the curve because AI is here to stay. So there's no point fearing it.
Speaker 2:It is fraught with issues. I understand that. But at the same time, it can be a great tool to help you speed up what you're doing. It can give you ideas that perhaps you hadn't thought of. It's great to help with planning.
Speaker 2:So the ways I've been using it, I've been using it to help pull together a comms campaign. So I've got to meet with my clients, I get the brief from them, put together a plan and then I feed that plan into I've been using at the moment ChatGeeBT, but there's other tools called Claude. CIPR has a wonderful training program, so if anybody can get onto that who's in The UK. And actually, we had people overseas attending. So anyway, there's all these tools out there and they do pretty much the same thing.
Speaker 2:But it's great because then it will throw up its version of your plan that you fed to it. It might give you some more ideas, which I think is fantastic. So it's, I'm using it as a personal assistant. I use it outside of work as well as inside of work. And I'm just really, I'm playing with it.
Speaker 2:I'm exploring it. I've lost any fear of that I've had of it. I think as PR in the comms community, we've got to know how it works because we've got to understand how obviously, there's the big discussion around fake news, fake videos, fake content, and that is concerning. But I think you've got to understand how it works to be able to manage your own crisis communications. If something comes up that has been AI generated, which is fake or is inaccurate.
Speaker 2:And that's the thing, by using it, I've learned AI is only as good as the prompts that you feed it. So you've got to get really good at feeding it clear briefs and clear questions. You've got to get good sometimes then it comes out with some funny answers and then you've got to probe it a bit more. You've got to ask it some more questions. It's a language model.
Speaker 2:I mean, you've got other tools where you're using graphics and images and the scariest thing I think is that you can upload voice clips now and then you can create content using somebody else's voice which isn't their material.
Speaker 1:Is arriving in the world of podcasts, you might've seen with voice generation. And yes, there are, I think you're completely correct. AI is here to stay and it's only been around really, it's in its infancy, what twelve months or so. I look at the leaps and bounds that have been taken in that time. And the law has not really caught up with the regulation for AI, has not caught up with the speed of the technology.
Speaker 1:So who knows where we will be in just in twelve months time and who knows in five or ten years time what AI will be capable of doing but we are seeing it in alumni relations in fundraising. I have a colleague, a friend who's going to be on a future podcast with me who trains fundraisers in education about using AI to assist them in their fundraising efforts. And she actually gives some free courses that are available as well as some also some longer paid courses. But yeah, it's touching everything and we have to embrace We have no choice. And you have to be careful with AI.
Speaker 1:Often it's notorious, chat GPT, for giving erroneous answers. You have to fact check. You can't take it at face value Absolutely. The answers that are generated. But it's a great starting point to help us in our work.
Speaker 1:It definitely doesn't replace us yet. Yet, we'll say. But for now it's a great tool.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah. I think that I've lost that fear of it, Oh, is it gonna replace my job? Because I think it's not sentient and it doesn't even I see it as a tool because even stuff that I've got out of AI, I'm still having to check it, as you say, check it, fact check it. I've had stuff it's given me and I thought that's not quite right.
Speaker 2:And then you probably because what it's doing, it's trying to fill the gaps. You've given it a command or instruction and it's pulling all its information together and if there's a gap there, it will just try and fill it. So that's where as a human, you've got to know your stuff, you've got to fact check it, you've got to be careful. So anybody, any employer that's thinking we can just use it and not have that role, they're going to get in trouble because if they haven't got somebody who's checking the material to make sure it's accurate, then it's, you know, they're going get in trouble. There's tools now, I'm really excited.
Speaker 2:I've yet to play with this, but it's the next thing I want to try. There's an AI app that you can get that's basically your artificial intelligence minute taker in meetings so that you can invite it. So if it's a Teams meeting, you can invite it to your Teams meeting as an attendee and it will take the minutes for you and all the actions and summarize it. So that's I think, it's a great tool. So whoever would have been taking the minutes can now concentrate and actually contributing to the meeting in a more productive and creative way.
Speaker 1:Serena, thank you for joining me today and sharing your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us. Do you have any closing words of wisdom to share with comms experts and alumni relations professionals?
Speaker 2:I think draw on the power of your own network. We're all alumni of one either of a school, a college, an institution, I'm a civil service alumna. So there's always a network out there that's waiting for you. So join it and get involved because you meet such fantastic people. And I think if you're a comms professional and you want to move into the world of alumni relations, do it because again, you've got all the skills that are totally transferable and vice versa.
Speaker 2:So if you're alumni relations and you want to move out into a different aspect of communications roles, again, I think the transferable skills go both ways. So I think there's lots of flexibility in career paths there.
Speaker 1:Wise words, very good advice. Thank you again. It's been a pleasure having you on alumni podcast, Serena, and your insights into alumni relations and communications in general. And I'm sure they'll undoubtedly be beneficial to our listeners. And that concludes another episode of Alumni Podcasts.
Speaker 1:Be sure to subscribe for more inspiring stories and expert insights from other alumni professionals. And we will see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Alumni Podcasts. If you have a question or a topic that you'd like us to cover in this series, then please reach out to us over our social media channels. And if you'd like to learn more about producing a podcast for your alumni community, then visit our website for more information at alumnipodcasts.com.
Speaker 1:Until next time, bye bye for now.