News from St. Gallen: CAA General Assembly 2012

Dear CEMS Alumni, we would like to bring you summary of the biggest CEMS Alumni International Event of 2012. The University of St. Gallen (SGH) hosted this year's CEMS Annual Events, traditionally connected with students' graduation, academic meetings and most importantly for you, with General Assembly of the CEMS Alumni Association.

The official Alumni meeting took place on December 1st and we had representatives of 10 Local Alumni Commitees voting this time (CZ, AT, DE, FR, UK, IT, DK, PL, BE, CH). Based on new statuses of the CAA, local committees could elect some members of the new CAA executive body - the CAA Board (it should stay in active mandate for three years). See new structure of the elected CAA Board below, there were some great candidates among junior and senior Alumni and also among dedicated members of Local Committees who are willing to help promote CEMS Alumni network on international level. This new board now has to vote on the position of the upcoming CAA President.

St.Gallen was beautifuly covered with snow and with Xmas markets season starting, it was a very enjoyable stay for both students and alumni, not to mention great Swiss organization skills around the whole event. Alumni program was also very full this time. Besides Friday's and Saturday's parties, there were special Alumni Cheese Fondue dinner on Saturday and Alumni Brunch on Sunday, both organized by LC Switzerland. This created nice atmosphere for Alumni to talk, get to know each other or meet again. If you want to participate as Alumni enjoying the power of CEMS network, do not forget to pay your CAA membership fee for 2013 and you can enjoy next year's event in Barcelona :-).

Other key callouts from Alumni Assembly:

• CAA Board will hire the CAA director in first half of 2013 and this will be full time paid employee responsible for operations of the CAA Board. CEMS Headquarters did not sponsor CAA anyhow in 2012, but in 2013, they plan to contribute on professionalisation of the CAA, under condition of hiring the CAA director (could be up to 72,500 EUR).
• Alumni membership fee stays at 60 EUR per person for 2013.
• CAA holds 109,996€ in open reserves and 50,900€ in reserves on funding of life-long members (split in multiple accounts, 76,500€ is now in risk-free savings account since 11/2012), CAA can propose how these funds could be used going forward or LCs could propose to organize a bigger pan-European event, new CAA board will be able to decide on use of these reserves. These are international CAA funds, they do not belong to dedicated LCs.
• Update on Linked In Group: 5250 members connected, we should more promote to raise awareness of CEMS through LinkedIn, please add CEMS ecucation to your profile, among those 5250 members, we have some very good senior profiles, they might not be paying members anymore, but they connected through LinkedIn.
• CAA needs to work on career service offerings – besides personal networking, this area has never been very successful, CEMS job market is empty and LinkedIn group slowly starts bringing some interesting job offers, but we should have a separate professional db where paying alumni can look for job opportunities – very good added value. Torsten R. presented proposal to use French company manageurs.com which is active with alumni associations in French speaking countries. They would need to translate their product fully into English and also start offering more opportunities outside of French speaking regions, but they are very flexible in terms of systematic solution. Corporate partners could also use special access, paying alumni could access exclusively.