A delegation of 60 alumni of Yale University will visit Beijing on July 20. China is to share best practices in alumni relations and explore opportunities for alumni collaborations at the World Alumni Leadership Conference.

The purpose of the conference is not only educational - how to create and sustain alumni organizations - but also collaborative.

Alumni from leading universities will be able to share the best practices that foster alumni communities, or "friends for life." Alumni and administrators from all Chinese universities are invited to this innovative program which has capacity for only 450 people.

Yale has a long tradition of engaging its alumni in a wide array of initiatives that build loyalty to the university as well as foster community spirit among the alumni itself. The Conference will address the need for world leading universities to develop resources from alumni and other private sources of support.

The Conference will feature discussions sessions to promote interaction of alumni from the various universities discussing topics related to alumni relations and it will include a panel on entrepreneurship by illustrious Yale alumni.

In order to provide the most effective exchange of ideas and ensure that ideas from around the world are presented, the alumni of the members of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) are invited to attend and be represented by alumni based in Beijing.

The IARU members are National University of Singapore, Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley, Australian National University, Zurich ETH, University of Copenhagen, University of Tokyo, Peking University (PKU) and Yale.

PKU is the Beijing representative for the Conference. The Ministry of Education has expressed their support for this initiative.

In July 2009, the University of Tokyo hosted the Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange program which sponsors the Conference.

The National University of Singapore (NUS), partnering with Yale to create a new liberal arts campus in Asia, is also working to strengthen alumni relations and has identified the Conference as an opportunity to work with its own alumni as well as learn from the Yale alumni hosting the Conference and the Chinese alumni invited to attend.

NUS will send six representatives from Singapore to meet with their alumni under the auspices of the Conference.

The Yale alumni delegation will be joined by family and friends as well as the participants in the Yale Alumni Service Corps/Yale-China Association cultural exchange program taking place in Xiuning from July 9 – 17.