Karalyn Eide leveraged personal initiative and opportunity to become the first North American alumni relations and development director for her alma mater, Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. She began her new job less than a year ago, shortly after earning her master's degree from the private university in 2007. Now living in Maryland, Eide is busy launching a North American alumni operation from scratch and laying the groundwork for a future fundraising component. Eide earned her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She can be reached at Karalyn@bilkent.alumni.edu.tr.

How did you happen to forge a North American alumni operation for a Turkish university?

As an American, I wanted to travel overseas, and I decided to go somewhere outside of Western Europe. I wanted to get a different experience. That led me to Turkey, and Turkey led me to Bilkent, an English-language university with a reputation for excellence in science and technology.

During the course of earning my master's degree in international relations, I grew to love Turkey and the Turkish culture. Before graduating last year, I approached President (İhsan) Dogramaci to tell him how great my graduate school experience had been. I proposed that I would help promote Bilkent in North America, where many of its graduates work and live, and he brainstormed this three-part job.

In a nut shell, my job involves launching an alumni operation from scratch, laying the groundwork for a future fundraising initiative, and recruiting recent American college graduates to participate in a one-year overseas teach-and-study program sponsored by Bilkent.

Right now, I'm focusing on alumni relations and affinity programming. The fundraising piece is not really part of the picture yet. By design, the first contact I make isn't the call asking them for money but instead is the call to make a connection. Most of them haven't heard from their alma mater in years, especially on this side of the ocean, and are excited to get that first call, e-mail or invitation.

How did you get started?

I more or less set out on my own without a formal job description. I came in at the ground level in mid-September 2007. I really didn't know anything about alumni relations beyond knowing that my alma mater, UNC Chapel Hill, sent me lots of alumni mailings!

I also came into this job without a complete list of alumni. When I left Turkey for the United States, I had a paper-copy spreadsheet with 580 names but quickly found that the long distance between the institution and many of its graduates had made most of the information outdated and so I was basically at square one!

I'm guessing that we have 1,500 to 2,000 graduates in North America, and to reach them, I am starting by obtaining the most essential element: data. A lot of these people are engineers and scientists who live in major cities. And thankfully, they are extremely tech-savvy, which helps me connect to them through viral communication efforts.

The U.S.-based Bilkent foundation, Friends of Bilkent University, maintains an office in the Empire State Building in New York City, which I visit every two months, usually in connection with an alumni event. I also travel to Turkey two or three times a year.

Can you describe your approach to hosting alumni events?

During a recent West Coast tour, I hosted a gathering in the San Francisco Bay area that drew our best attendance so far. An alumna in the area allowed me to use her name as a co-host, which helped a lot. One contact led to another, and the night of the event drew 60 for a multicourse meal with hummus and eggplant appetizers, chicken kabobs, and baklava and tea at a Turkish restaurant in Palo Alto.

Over dessert, I gave a speech about the alumni program. I also gave out Bilkent luggage tags and handed out response cards asking them what they liked and didn't like and for suggestions regarding future events and their contact information.

This step is critical, because once the event is finished, all I have in the end is this stack of cards and some digital pictures. I learned this fact the hard way after ending my first event in NYC with just digital pictures and an unused "guestbook."

My learning curve has been huge. I've attended two CASE conferences, "Workshop for Newcomers in Development" and "Workshop for Newcomers in Alumni Relations." These were amazing, the saving grace for me. I'm like a little sponge at these conferences. I also have a couple of CASE mentors- Rebecca Naples at the University of Maryland, and Raina Lenney at George Washington University.

Any parting thoughts on your first year on the job and plans for the future?

During the past 10 months or so, I've met with 200 to 250 alumni face-to-face. So far, my trips have taken me to major cities throughout the Northeast corridor and the West Coast as well as in Texas and Tennessee. I expect to revisit many of the same destinations in upcoming trips as well as Chicago, Toronto and Atlanta.

At the same time, things are moving forward in building an online community, which will serve as a North American Bilkent alumni home site and is set to launch sometime this fall.

I really like the interaction with Turks in America. I enjoy learning about them and have a very natural affinity with them. And they seem impressed that someone who is not Turkish has formed such a strong connection with their culture.

This article is from the July 2008 issue of BriefCASE.
Please share your questions and comments with Pam Russell via e-mail at russell@case.org or by telephone at +1-202-478-5680.