Association News
Veteran of Yale and CMU to Head MIT Alumni Association
Judith M. Cole. Photo: Tanit Sakakini.
Judith M. Cole came into the alumni relations world rather by accident. Her journey to become the MIT Alumni Association's executive vice president and chief executive officer, starting in August, wove through a series of learning communities and business environments.
As an undergraduate, Cole earned a degree in business administration with a concentration in finance at the University of Colorado in 1976 and then moved to Texas. There she worked in banking for six years, ultimately as a vice president at Texas Commerce Bank. However, she notes, "banking did not have the psychic giveback that I was looking for."
With a desire for further education, she returned to her home state of Connecticut and earned a master's degree in public and private management at the Yale School of Management in 1984. Between her graduate years, she landed a summer internship at AT&T Bell Labs' new ventures group, where she loved the opportunity to ask the tough, practical questions that helped the company think from an outsider's perspective. After earning her degree, she accepted a job with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Again, though, she didn't find the personal satisfaction she was seeking.
Cole left BCG to search for a better career fit. She returned to New Haven where she had family and through several serendipitous events, she took a consulting job organizing the 10th anniversary celebration for the Yale School of Organization and Management, then later signed on with the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA), where she remained for 17 years. As the director of education and AYA services, she focused on educational programs, graduate school alumni relations, liaisons with alumni offices in Yale's 11 professional schools and the development of revenue-producing programs. The world of higher education had provided the right mix of intellectual and psychological satisfactions.
"I am a lifelong learner, and I thrive in educational communities," Cole says. "Higher education has made our nation great. And if we don't all support and nurture our great institutions like MIT, we are forgoing a huge opportunity."
In 2004, she was recruited by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to revitalize the alumni relations program in anticipation of a major fundraising campaign. Through her years there, she worked to strengthen the alumni board and to increase alumni engagement. Throughout her Yale and CMU experiences, Cole has sought to strengthen the connection between the institution and its alumni by increasing participation in social and intellectual events, encouraging activities such as mentoring students, and reaching out during annual giving campaigns.
Cole has also worked closely with advancement officers. "At CMU, I found our gift officers enormously helpful in identifying people who are hungry for more involvement. The primary focus of fundraising in alumni relations is on broad participation. Gifts of any dollar amount are important. In recent years there has been so much publicity around large gifts that alumni can think that their smaller gifts do not matter, and this just is not true. The aggregation of many smaller gifts can make a huge difference. A single raindrop in the desert does not amount to anything, but a hurricane in the desert can create a lake."
She also sees the opportunity to build stronger engagement with alumni who have earned graduate degrees-now more than half of all MIT alumni. Affiliation, she believes, is largely based on career and the relative prestige of the institution. "In most cases, the graduate degree will be most relevant to your career," Cole says, "and there is no place more prestigious than MIT for your graduate degree."
"Alumni relations is about community building. Through the partnership of volunteers and staff, the campus community is expanded to become a university community that incorporates alumni into the life of the institution. Alumni are not an external audience-they are part of the family," says Cole, who was a colleague of President Susan Hockfield's when both held positions at Yale.
One advantage of her new job is living closer to her son, Christopher, who is entering his third year at Hampshire College. Another is closer proximity to her favorite haunts in northern Maine, where she and her son fly fish. And then there is coming to MIT itself. "President Hockfield is an extraordinary community builder. The opportunity to work with her again and to contribute to this remarkable educational community is a great gift. "
By Nancy DuVergne Smith
Published June 1, 2009
