In my five years planning and managing events for the Cornell Club of Boston, I’ve always enjoyed catching up with fellow alumni at regular events. Our gatherings range from happy hours at local restaurants to classical concerts to career-based panels and networking sessions. With in-person meetings paused for the foreseeable future, the Cornell Club of Boston jumped whole-heartedly into the Zoom world, where we have been glad to find that we could continue fostering connections, learning new things, and having fun.
We’ve been lucky to have an array of alumni willing to share their time and talent with the Cornell community. We’ve hosted two professional development webinars featuring alums: one on digital networking (Deb Becker, MILR ’04) and the other on running productive meetings (Liz Myers ’04). We decided to cap attendance for these webinars at 25-30, which was an effective way to make the event still feel personal; guests could see everyone on one screen and were able to speak up to share experiences. These sessions felt timely and informative, but also allowed alums to connect over shared challenges, concerns, and tips for success.
While networking and professional connections are a great part of the Cornell Club’s offerings, we’ve also been able to have some fun in our virtual events! We held a Wine Tasting over Zoom with a local wine shop, the Urban Grape, and had a great turn-out from a wide variety of class years. The store delivered the wines we would be tasting to each registrant’s home in advance (within Greater Boston), and their wine educator guided us through a tasting. There were a lot of laughs and many reflections on the “Intro to Wines” class at Cornell! Last week we held our first “Big Red Fitness Class,” and are looking to turn the idea into a weekly series. Jenna Bernard ’18 hosted a high-intensity interval training workout that left us all sweaty and smiling! Next week, Leza Gordon ’16 will lead us in a Yoga class.
Even in a world in which so much is virtual, the Cornell Club has been working to provide forums on which alums can connect. We held a three-week series of Saturday discussions led by Emily Liu ’84 in which Cornellians could talk and check-in, and our Women’s Dinner series has transformed into digital Women’s Lunches. Each week, we send all of our members a “roundup” of Cornell’s online happenings, including both Cornell Club of Boston events and university-wide options. Our club’s executive board collaborates to collect these events each week, and our fabulous board member Sarah Baldessari ’16 compiles them in a single email to streamline our communication with alumni and avoid taking up too much inbox space.
The Cornell community never fails to step up to meet a challenge with enthusiasm and creativity, and this time has been no exception. We are excited to continue serving our local Cornellians with events and opportunities for connection in the online world and beyond.
written by Meghan Brown ’13, VP of Programming for the Cornell Club of Boston