Cornellians are flocking to industry-oriented events more readily than to just about any other type of alumni event. To better serve those Cornellians, the university is expanding its business communities for alumni.

"It's a no-brainer for us to invest in these programs," said Chris Marshall, associate vice president for alumni affairs. "Hopefully, there will be more and more of them going forward."

The alumni affairs and development division has filled two new associate directors positions that it had held vacant for a year due to the university's hiring freeze. Magdalena Kalinka is now associate director of the Cornell Entrepreneur Network; Ashley Binter '97 is associate director for Cornell Silicon Valley. They join John Zelenka '03, who directs Cornell Wall Street. Together the groups are known as Cornell Business Communities (CBC).

The CBC helps alumni make useful connections with each other and faculty, staff and students through small and large events. Collectively the CBC plans to produce 150 events for 6,000 Cornellians in the next year, in cities from New York City to San Francisco and Miami, said CBC Senior Director Shannon Murray '94. "If you call somebody whom you met at one of these events, they'll return your call," he said. "But if you call someone you met out of the blue at a conference, you may not get that level of cooperation."

Networking isn't the only benefit. Each group's events focus on current industry-specific topics. A recent presentation sponsored by the Cornell Entrepreneur Network covered "The Six Deadly Sins of Web Marketing: Selecting a Web Marketing Plan in the Age of Social Media," featuring author Hollis Thomases '87.

Cornell Silicon Valley, which caters to the approximately 10,000 Cornell alumni who live and work in the San Francisco Bay area, hosts events tied to technology and entrepreneurship. An April 8 panel discussion titled "Beyond Avatar: the Big Business of Virtual Worlds" brought together five alumni panelists who discussed trends in the business of virtual goods, gaming and monetization.

And Cornell Wall Street, which caters to the more than 50,000 Cornellians in the financial sector, sponsors events that range from such crowd-pleasers as a talk featuring "Too Big to Fail" by author Andrew Ross Sorkin '99 to more industry-specific events like a recent panel discussion on "High Frequency and Quantitative Trading."

The CBC also hosted 20 online seminars attended by almost 2,000 alumni in the last 12 months, Murray said. Topics ranged from corporate strategy execution to how to find the right mentors.

The division is also considering creating new networks for alumni in fields including entertainment, sustainability, biotechnology and nonprofits, Marshall said. "There are all kinds of industry-based programming that we can do," he said, "and that is what our alumni are looking for."