Anand Ganjam joined Alumni Council in 2014 as an ex officio member after he’d been elected University Park Undergraduate Association president. Then still a student, Ganjam ’15 Bus says the volunteer position on the Alumni Association’s governing body gave him a window into a world that awaited him after graduation.

“Everybody talks about the power of the Penn State Alumni Association, but being on Alumni Council brought that to life,” says Ganjam, who began a two-year term as council president on July 1. “You walk into the room and there are 70-plus alumni representing all the campuses and colleges volunteering their time, and you think, Wow, these people come back because they care about Penn State.”

Ganjam, a management consultant for Accenture who lives in Philadelphia, specializes in helping organizations “win people’s hearts and minds to do things differently for the betterment of the organization and of themselves.” As Alumni Council president, he has laid out three priorities:

1. Communicating the Alumni Association’s value and impact. “I think there is a tremendous opportunity to help alumni see how the association can be valuable to themselves and their families, and how their involvement makes a difference.”

2. Activating our volunteers as champions. “I’d be hard-pressed to find an alumni volunteer body that is more effective and more purposeful than what we have,” he says.

3. Modernizing our data and technology. “I’m incredibly optimistic that the new [customer relationship management system] will let us be more relevant to more people.”

Ganjam is serving alongside newly elected vice president Susan Robinson ’94 H&HD.