The Singapore Alumni Association is INSEAD’s sixth largest alumni group with 2300 alumni residing or working in the City state. Its true privilege resides in the fact that INSEAD’s Asia Campus is in town, providing ample opportunities for exchanges, friendships, and partnerships between the alumni, faculty and staff of INSEAD. The alumni also have access to the INSEAD library and to many lectures on campus. The alumni have the pleasure of reliving their INSEAD experience minutes away from their home.
Strengthening the bond between alumni
The Singapore NAA’s mission is “to strengthen the bond between INSEAD Alumni in Singapore”. To achieve this, the NAA organised 47 events in 2015 (60 in 2014). Almost half of these were speaker events, the other half were social events.
In the last three years, our two major and best-attended events were the Annual General Meeting and Gala Dinner held at the historic Singapore Cricket Club and Global INSEAD Day. The latter was an INSEAD Alumni Fund (IAF) fundraising event with a panel discussion at INSEAD followed by a party at an elegant venue. Past topics include; “Business as a Force for Good”, “Innovation and Creativity” and “Inspire and Be Inspired” and have led to passionate debates. Professors Neil Bearden, Manuel Sosa and Randel Carlock kindly led the discussions.
The monthly First Friday drinks, held in some of the most exciting bars in Singapore, attracts from 50 to 100 alumni each month. The younger alumni particularly enjoy these events. Informal lunches take place in three different business locations and each attract up to 20 alumni on a monthly basis.
We have introduced a number of very successful events in the last few years. Six to eight alumni are randomly invited to another alumni’s home for the quarterly random dinners. Our bi-monthly Professor’s lectures have brought many alumni back on campus. Professors Henri–Claude de Bettignies, Manfred Kets de Vries, Jean-Francois Manzoni, Claudia Zeisberger, Horacio Falcao, are among the INSEAD faculty who have kindly shared their research with us.
In memory of our professor and fellow alumnus, Patrick Turner MBA’78 who sadly passed away on 12 September 2014, we host an annual fundraising event. Last year, a panel of entrepreneurs and Dean Ilian Mihov celebrated Patrick’s generous contributions to the entrepreneurs and to INSEAD. The IAF, the Alumni Entrepreneurship Club and the NAA will organise the next fundraising event in memory of Patrick on June 27th this year.
Alumni and guests kindly share their passion, knowledge and expertise at our speaker events. The topics vary from finance to social impact, from space to careers, from ethics to culture and from investment to branding.
For senior alumni in Singapore (‘senior’ meaning ten years out of INSEAD), we host a yearly lunch and a couple of special speaker events.
For alumnae, we host quarterly Women in Leadership lunches featuring a prominent alumna speaker who inspires and shares her stories and wisdom.
Our Dean resides in Singapore
We are fortunate that Dean Ilian Mihov lives in Singapore. He has been generous with his time and supports us by attending and celebrating many of our important events. He keeps us up to date with the strategy and the successes of INSEAD. We are really thankful for his support and appreciation towards the alumni. We also benefit from the proximity of the INSEAD team who often motivates and assists us in fulfilling our mission towards the alumni. We are very grateful to the Director of Alumni Relations, Austin Tomlinson, for his constant support and kind encouragement.
A young alumni base
The alumni population in Singapore is young compared to the other large INSEAD NAAs around the world. Most have graduated after 2000, when the campus opened in Singapore. MBA’s comprise 59% of our alumni, 10% are EMBA’s, 30% are Executive degree holders. We have alumni from 64 different countries, with the largest groups being Singaporeans (29%), Indians (9.5%), French (4.5%), Americans (4%), British (3%), and Chinese (2.5%). The five largest sectors that employ our alumni are; Banking, Consulting, Government, Oil and Gas and Pharmaceuticals.
Our membership base at the Singapore NAA has grown recently from 450 members in December 2015 to over 500 members today. We are pleased with the increase and hope to attract many more members with the great events that we have planned in the coming months. In particular, a large party for GID’16 in September and the Asia Alumni Forum in Singapore in November promise to be inspiring celebrations.
Passionate volunteers
The NAA would not exist if it was not driven by passionate volunteers who regularly dedicate their valuable time and energy to the community.
Our current EXCO members are Alexandra De Mello MBA’94D (President), Avalyn Lim TIEMBA’14Jan (Secretary), Abel van Staveren EMBA’08Dec (Treasurer), Sabrina Ng MBA’10D, Cintia Tavella MBA’07D, Hemant Aneja MBA’06D, Caroline McLaughlin MBA’97D, Anne-Ev Enzmann MBA’01J and Rakesh Padmanabhan EMBA’13Dec.
In Singapore, there are several alumni Clubs and Groups, the most active ones include the Healthcare Club (Francois Cadioux EMBA’12Dec), the Running Club (Yue Wang MBA’05D), the Entrepreneurship Club (Max Loosen MBA’14J, Eugene Yap MBA’13J) and the TMT Network (Tapas Kuila MBA’12D).
We appreciate the advantages that come with our close proximity to the Asia Campus and as always we look forward to meeting and welcoming any visiting alumni to our Singapore events throughout the year.
