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Providing Support for Alumni, University and State

Greetings Mountaineers!

As we watch our beloved Mountaineers on the gridiron and wait for the fall colors to arrive, we’re hard at work finding new ways to support our alumni and friends, the University, and the state of West Virginia.

Most recently, WVU joined a collaborative with Marshall University and the state called West Virginia Forward to identify opportunities that will diversify and strengthen the economy of the state. This West Virginia Forward collaborative partnered with the McKinsey consulting firm and spent the last several months traveling the state, holding workshops, and completing detailed data analysis to develop a roadmap for our future.

Strengthening the West Virginia economy will be no easy task and it will take a diverse group of stakeholders to move from roadmap to reality. The WVU Alumni Association, representing over 200,000 graduates, will play a vital role in moving West Virginia Forward while creating economic opportunity and a secure tomorrow for future generations.

Our Alumni Association is the connective tissue between West Virginia and the many graduates who have moved away to pursue their careers. In the future, we want to keep our graduates in West Virginia and the best way to do this is to enable economic growth and job creation. Harnessing the knowledge, skills, wisdom, talents and treasure of our alumni will play a vital role in helping us find innovative solutions to achieve our goals.

The first step to success is turning our 200,000 graduates and 150,000 friends into an active network. We’ve launched two programs aimed at developing that network:

WVU Connect – think of WVU Connect as LinkedIn for Mountaineers. It’s an online tool designed for Mountaineers to help Mountaineers. Need to find a mentor? Want to hire an experienced Mountaineer? Need some help learning about an industry? Want to connect with your classmates? WVU Connect is the place to go. Each of you will be receiving an invite over the next couple of weeks to join WVU Connect and I look forward to engaging with you on the site.

Mountaineer Alliance – The Alliance is a business-to-business network of Mountaineers created by our Alumni Chapter in Washington, D.C. This professional network of business owners/leaders, experts and thought leaders, and senior government officials was created to support economic opportunities for our alumni, the University and the State. It fits perfectly with the vision of the West Virginia Forward collaborative and we’re already seeing success. We are piloting this program in the DC Metro area this year with plans to roll it out to other locations in 2018.

Thank you for all you do for West Virginia and West Virginia University! I hope to see each of you in Morgantown soon!

Let’s Go!

Sean, ‘89