News

by Eamonn Moran (C '04, L '07), Secretary, Georgetown Alumni Club of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.

As we have for the last few years, the Georgetown Club of Metropolitan Washington, DC, has organized the Dinner with Alumni program during the first two weeks of April.  

Students enjoy chatting and networking with a Georgetown alum over dinner, get to learn what life is like after leaving the Hilltop, and learn about the different career opportunities available to Georgetown alumni.  Of course, students also appreciate the opportunity to get away from campus for a delicious meal.  

For us Georgetown alumni, we all would have loved a local alum to host us and some of our friends for a delicious dinner. That may not have been part of our college experience, but now alumni have a chance to give back to Georgetown by hosting current juniors and seniors for a meal.  Alumni who sign up for this program agree to host a certain number of students at their home or at a local restaurant of their choice to give the students a chance to meet and learn from them.  This year, we have been fortunate to have 29 alumni, including various members of the Georgetown University Alumni Association Board of Governors and Board of Regents, as well as the Georgetown Alumni Club of DC, graciously and generously offer to host current juniors and seniors.  

Events have included:

• a lunch at the Pentagon with Erik Brine, a GPPI alumnus and Major in the Air Force Reserves who is a Presidential Management Fellow at the Pentagon where he advises the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs on legislative matters and leads the organization's congressional administration and outreach functions and supports the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs as a Press Operations Officer.
• a dinner with Susan Butler Hurson, M.D. (C '78, M '88) and her husband John Adams Hurson (C'76, L'79).  Susan has been in private practice at Foxhall Square in DC since 1992, and has privileges at Georgetown and Sibley Hospitals, and John is the Executive Vice President for Government Affairs for the Personal Care Products Council in Washington DC and former Majority Leader of the Maryland House.
• a dinner with Michele Davis (SFS '88), who has has worked at the nexus of political and financial media throughout her career and has broad experience in formulating and executing communications strategy and managing crisis communications, including service as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Director of Policy Planning at the Department of the Treasury from 2006 through January 20, 2009, where she was a senior member of the Treasury team addressing the financial crisis.
• a dinner with Ambassador Clifford Bond (SFS '70), who is a retired Foreign Service officer who served as U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2001-2004 and as Special Envoy for Srebrenica from 2007-2008; and
• a dinner with Beth Crowley (COL '98, LAW '11), and her husband John McKinnon.  Beth is a Media Relations Coordinator in the U.S. Senate Press Gallery, where she has worked since 2007, and John covers tax and fiscal policy issues for the Wall Street Journal. He previously covered the White House during President George W. Bush’s second term.

by Meredith Karam (C'07)

Tying together two of the club’s more popular nontraditional events (book club and cooking classes), the November 26 cooking event was themed around the Julia Child biography, Dearie.  

Susan Holt (G’85), founder and owner of Culinaerie, showed guests how to make some of Julia’s favorites including apple and celeriac remoluade, sobronade and walnut cake.



See more photos on Facebook.

Dear Dedicated Alumni, Faculty, Student Leaders and Staff of Georgetown,

My name is Mike Meaney, and I am the President of the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA). I write once again seeking to invoke the spirit of generosity so many of you showed during Project Move-In during New Student Orientation this year.

For most students, Thanksgiving break is a brief pause from hectic Georgetown life right before final exams. Most of us travel home to be with our family and friends to enjoy good food and good company. Close to 30 students this year, however, are not able to travel home due to financial constraints.  Without the help of our volunteers, this can mean spending a rather lonely Thanksgiving on the Hilltop.  Add to this the fact that Leo's Cafeteria shuts down during Thanksgiving break to allow its workers a rest, which unfortunately means that students feel additional financial strains and loneliness.

This year, GUSA, in partnership with the Georgetown Scholarship Program (GSP) and the Office of Financial Aid, has committee to making Thanksgiving on the Hilltop a bit more festive and fun. But once again, we have little budget to do this, and thus are in need generous volunteers who are willing and able to help in this endeavor.

We realize that during Thanksgiving, many of you will be traveling to see family, or will have family come in from out of town. We are sensitive to the fact that Thanksgiving plans are frequently made months in advance, and that many of you, perhaps despite the desire to contribute, will be unable to do so.

For those of you who are able, however, GUSA and GSP are hoping you might be interested in including some (perhaps 2-4) of our students in your own Thanksgiving dinners -- or perhaps you'd like to invite students to a meal or outing in DC (museum, movie, etc) on Friday or Saturday following Thanksgiving.

If you are interested in volunteering to make Thanksgiving more enjoyable for our students unable to go home, please fill out this form GSP Turkey Day Volunteer Form  indicating your willingness to participate.

Thank you all so much for your time, and your continued commitment to Georgetown. Indeed, we hope that through initiatives like Project Move-In and now Project Turkey-Day, together we can all live out the values of our Alma Mater, as men and women for others.

Sincerely,
Mike
--
Michael J. Meaney

by Liu-Yue Lam (MBA' 07)

Dear Fellow Hoyas,

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Liu-Yue Lam and I am the Co-Founder of Oxstones Investment Club. I would like to kindly invite you to join the Oxstones community. I hope you will find it enlightening and useful for your educational as well as professional career goals.

Hoya Saxa,
Liu-Yue

Oxstones Investment Club – The New Silk Road - To Enlighten, To Empower, and To Evolve.

Join Us. www.oxstones.com Sign up for Daily Email on our Best Investment Ideas and Global Content

Please Book mark our site as your source for emerging markets news, tools, data, & stock ideas.

What’s the value proposition?
•Insightful content from around the World & Free Investment Tools
•Free Foreign Stock Lists by Country, Region, and Sector Globally
•Free Country Profiles & Country Comparisons
•Free Weekly Stock Screens by Different Fundamental Factors
•Free Stock Lists & ETF Lists by sectors, asset class, asset type, style, and size
•Valuation model for real estate
•Books of Wisdom - Recommended Reading List for Financial Education

by Christine Smith (C' 04)

The breezes of summer’s end were blowing as a group of enthusiastic Hoyas met at Café Asia on Monday, September 20, for the first gathering of this season’s DC Alumni Club volunteer meeting, which attracted a range of grads from the class of ’71 through this past May. Although the boisterous noise of the meeting place at first felt a hindrance, we quickly realized that Hoya alums, both young and not-quite-as-young, have a knack for raising their voices.

After lively and not at all icebreaker-like small group chats, we each presented our interests to the group and discovered a few common themes. A great many of the volunteers share an interest in event planning and marketing, which is wonderful news for the upcoming activities calendar. Not surprisingly, most attendees also expressed excitement about getting involved with the men’s basketball game watches. One fun new idea for this year, however, is to extend our Club events to include supporting other Hoyas athletics groups, such as women’s basketball and soccer. The vote is still out on whether the Club will be pro or anti-Vuvuzela.

In true Georgetown fashion, everyone brought great enthusiasm to the table and left the meeting ready to mobilize immediately. This year marks Stephanie Ortbal-Tibbs’ last as Club president, and we all look forward to making it a great one.

by Katherine Boyle (C' 08)

On the second anniversary of Lehman Brother’s historic collapse, the Georgetown Club of Metropolitan Washington, DC did what Georgetown does best: it held a discussion.

The gathering of great minds included professors and practitioners who spoke on the questions that baffle expert economists and undergrad econ dropouts alike: What are the origins of the financial meltdown? What’s the appropriate role of government in regulation? Will new Dodd-Frank actually do anything? Will we ever get jobs?

But it wouldn’t be a Georgetown event without heated debate, demonstrative handouts, a lively financial Q&A quiz session and a generous reception table (courtesy of the McDonough School of Business Alumni Group) stocked with those enticing cookies that caused your freshman fifteen. (Don’t deny it, you remember those.)

Experts included GU Law Center alum Brad Belt; Reena Aggarwal, Professor of Business Administration and Finance and former Deputy Dean of MSB; Steven Shafran, a one-time senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and David Walker, John A. Largay Professor of Business at MSB.

The panel hit on a range of topics, from disagreement over the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act and discussion about the lingering impact of "too big to fail" institutions and moral hazard in the marketplace to whether innovation in finance is a healthy model for emerging economies. Walker maintained that he’s “not optimistic” about the impact of Dodd-Frank, while Shafran concurred that “we’ll have to live with the risks so long as we want to have banks.”

Of course, Georgetown networking events always end with the all-important question of how an eager alum can translate a six-figure degree into an impressive job offer. Panelists agreed that new legislation will certainly lead to an explosion in regulatory jobs, making DC, as Belt called it, “a growth market that has long been a financial center.” It’s possible the prospect of those less-sexy regulatory jobs won’t appease bright-eyed MSB or Law grads with dreams of late nights curled up in a cubicle at Goldman or at a white shoe NYC law firm. But as indicated by Aggarwal in reference to both careers and emerging markets, “The world of finance is changing. We don’t know what the rules of the game are anymore.”

by Tim Schmitz (COL '05)

Hi folks,

I wanted to pass on word that the 18th Street Singers, DC's premiere young professionals choir, will be holding auditions for a limited number of openings for the 2008-09 season. The group was founded in 2004 and has a solid number of Hoyas (although we're always looking for more!). We rehearse once a week (Monday nights, September through June) and perform at least twice a year. In the last year, we've sung at the Strathmore Music Center and the National Gallery of Art, in addition to our regular concerts in downtown DC, released our first studio album and recorded an upcoming live album. We also have a ton of fun socially outside of rehearsal time. To set up an audition, please email auditions@18thstreetsingers.com or go to http://www.18thstreetsingers.com/. Or if you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email.

Tim Schmitz, COL '05
tschmitz@gmail.com

by Scott Beale (GU '98)

Hello Fellow Hoyas.

My name is Scott Beale (GU'98) and I run an international service program that organizes paid fellowship opportunities for rising nonprofit leaders to volunteer abroad for one year. Please see the info below and check out http://www.atlascorps.org/ for more information.

Volunteer Overseas with Atlas Corps!

Atlas Corps seeks nonprofit leaders from the U.S., Colombia, India and Ecuador to volunteer overseas for one year and participate in their management development training program. All expenses are paid in this prestigious fellowship program. All candidates must have 3-8 years of experience, a college degree and be a rising leader in their field. Candidates from India, Ecuador and Colombia who are applying to volunteer in the U.S. must speak, read and write English. Candidates from the U.S. who are applying to volunteer in Colombia must be proficient in Spanish. Apply as soon as possible to participate in this incredible program and be placed at fantastic Host organizations like Grameen Foundation, Ashoka, TechnoServe, GlobalGiving, Population Action International and more. Final application deadline is mid-April. All of the details are online at http://www.atlascorps.org/apply.html

Scott Beale
scott@atlascorps.org