Marie-Rose Delauzun, Head of Alumni Engagement at The Sutton Trust discusses the key role alumni communities play as relatable role models who can give authentic advice to young people who benefit from seeing ‘someone like me’ reflected in historically gate-kept careers and sectors.
We have all heard the phrase ‘you can’t be what you can’t see.’ 1 It reminds us how hard it is to aspire to a career or a future you don’t fully understand, especially if you can’t see anyone ‘like you’ working in it.
In my work at the Sutton Trust, where we champion social mobility from the birth to the workplace, our alumni frequently share stories about how they hadn’t known anyone who did jobs they were interested in when they were growing up. Certain worlds or sectors such as finance, law, tech or engineering, were a complete mystery, and simply not something people knew enough about.
At the Sutton Trust we have been working with young people from low socio-economic backgrounds to support them into universities or careers with recognised access gaps** 2 since 1997. Our alumni programme was established in 2017, and since then alumni helping the next generation of students on our programmes have played a valuable role in the support we offer. Our team run brilliant webinars, provide online resources, and utilise the expertise of many of the employers we partner with. But there is nothing that compares with the value-add of an alumni voice encouraging them.
It’s one of the hardest things to truly quantify in our work, but the ability to be relatable and share practical advice and learnings in an authentic way is consistently rated highly in surveys*** collecting feedback from our student/alumni events:
“I enjoyed networking with legal professionals, as well as meeting with other Sutton Trust alumni, who I could really relate to.”
At the Sutton Trust, the focus of our alumni programme is to support our past participants with their future careers and encouraging them to connect with each other. That means we’re constantly benefiting with a brilliant pool of engaged supporters who want to give back their time to us.
Our alumni community are involved in all aspects of our work – from research, to strategy, and across all our programming. And our Alumni Leadership Board act as key volunteer ambassadors for us, championing the importance of social mobility throughout their careers.
I chose to work in the alumni engagement sector because I love working with people and seeing the value of positive relationships and mutually beneficial support. My own experience of education was attending a school where the vast majority of students had parents who hadn’t gone to university or done higher apprenticeships.
Parents or teachers aren’t always able to give tailored advice on career options – so who can fill the gap? Alumni acting as inspirational role-models for each other and the next generation can make a genuine difference in supporting social mobility for the long-term.
[1] Coined by American activist Marian Edelman
[2] See various Sutton Trust reports on sectors including the Class Ceiling – Sutton Trust
[3] (average score 4.5 out of 5 in our Autumn 2023 events for agree – strongly agree it’s useful to attend these alumni career events)
