New alumni relations strategy focuses on meeting specific interests

With the goal of expanding opportunities for alumni and fostering lifelong relationships, the Office of Alumni Relations is employing a new strategy for meeting the needs of FIU graduates.

"We've listened to our alumni," said Carlos Becerra, interim director of the Office of Alumni Relations. "We want to be the means for their continued good experience with FIU. We want to keep them connected to their alma mater."

Carlos Becerra

The staff worked with the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association to establish new benefits, programs and services for members. The changes come after months of market research and input from alumni. Through a combination of surveys, database analysis, and focus group sessions, the Office of Alumni Relations has identified alumni trends and attitudes and developed a direction for the future.

The top priority is an enhanced benefits package that includes reduced fees at the fitness center on the University Park campus and the bookstores on both campuses, discount tickets to FIU athletic events, and discounts at national hotel and car-rental chains and Florida theme parks.

The FIU Career Fair

Association programs and events will aim to reach alumni at all stages of their lives and careers. Programs will be tailored to distinct groups such as singles, professionals, families and seniors, with a variety of different events and services from which members can choose. Scheduled for the coming year are Homecoming and a members-only party in conjunction with one of the films to be screened at the FIU 17th Miami Film Festival.

The association will also emphasize professional development opportunities, including career fairs and career skills workshops offered through FIU's Career Services office as well as members-only networking events.

With so many exciting activities on tap, communications takes on even greater importance. Accordingly, members now receive a quarterly newsletter as well as monthly e-mail news briefs. They will have the chance to join various e-mail-based interest groups and request more frequent updates on specific topics.

One of the most anticipated communication tools is the new interactive web site. In addition to a variety of features available to all alumni, association members have access to a members-only page from which they can shop for merchandise, renew their dues on-line, and view an alumni directory.

In response to the needs of career-minded alumni and those outside of the South Florida area, the association will begin an ambitious plan to become more chapter-based over the next five years. As expected, alumni showed a strong desire to network and interact with peers in the same industry, from the same discipline, or with those living in the same region. Several chapters already exist, including those in the College of Education and the College of Business Administration, as well as a number in the larger urban areas throughout the country.

`No limits' philosophy helps alumna triumph in business

Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera's life story reads like a cross between a Spanish-language telenovela and a manual on How to Succeed in Business. On the one hand, she has rebounded from personal hardships that include her father's political imprisonment in Cuba and childhood poverty in a New York tenement. On the other, she has started her own companies, established a non-profit organization to assist aspiring businesswomen, worked in developing countries at the request of the U.S. government and received numerous awards for her efforts.

Despite having to overcome great odds, the 1979 FIU alumna relies on the most down-to-earth of philosophies to explain her triumph. "I'm a very positive person," she says. "The bad things I go through I use as learning experiences."

Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera

The "bad things" began with Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba. Little Bettina, her mother and her older brother moved into the family's apartment in New York City in the late 1950s while her father tried to sell their businesses back home. Attempting to leave the country for the last time, he was arrested and sentenced to prison.

"For 14 years my mother dressed in black and waited for my father," remembers Aguilera, who didn't see her father again until the age of 17. In the intervening years, Aguilera and her family went from well-off to "dirt poor." They moved out of their own place into a run-down section of New York, scraped by on public assistance and, when gangs started causing problems for her brother, relocated to Miami. The hardships only made her stronger.

"I've always felt that there are no limits," says Aguilera, 42, who began working at age 13. Four years later, in need of money to attend FIU, she devised a clever business idea and began selling picture frames door-to-door. She eventually expanded the operation, hiring six employees. After graduating from FIU with a bachelor's degree in social work- a field she entered due to the poor treatment she endured during childhood visits to the welfare office - Aguilera, now married and a mother, began a career with Miami-Dade County. She started working with clients at the Caleb Center, the district courthouse in the Liberty City neighborhood. For the next 17 years she served as a government spokesperson and trained county employees in the areas of customer service, marketing and crisis management.

Managing a personal crisis of her own, however, would have the greatest effect on Aguilera's professional life. Following a medical leave without pay and going through a divorce, she set up shop as a professional troubleshooter.

"I can solve anything," she told doctors, lawyers, and business owners who paid her to secure loans, write business plans and do their leg work. She contacted accountants and other professionals for guidance when necessary, but primarily relied on "common sense."

Today, Aguilera conducts training sessions on team building, conflict resolution and effective communications for executives at companies such as Lucent Technologies and Hewlett-Packard. She also leads grassroots advocacy programs, which teach people how to organize and effect change, in countries including Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lithuania.

Requests from women who looked to Aguilera for inspiration and advice prompted her in 1993 to found the New Women Entrepreneur Center, which offers courses and one-on-one counseling in both English and Spanish and produces a bilingual television program.

"All my life I wanted to do exactly what I'm doing now," says Aguilera, who in 1994 was honored as one of the nation's top 22 Hispanic leaders by the National Hispana Leadership Institute. "I'm living my dream."

-Alexandra Pecharich