Ken Light

Newly elected CAA President Darek DeFreece '93 studied political science at Berkeley before completing his law degree. Now a Wells Fargo lawyer, DeFreece lives in San Francisco with his partner, Alan Croteau. They're expecting twins, a boy and a girl, in late August. He recently sat down with California editor Kerry Tremain to discuss his hopes and plans for the association.

You've said you want to focus on the growth beyond CAA's current borders. What do you mean by that?
We are much too centric on events and activities that occur in the Bay Area. We do a phenomenal job of servicing our alumni population here in Northern California, but I would love us to analyze how we can either grow the programs that truly reach beyond the Bay Area or develop other programs and perhaps jettison ones that don't do that. With California magazine leading the forefront, we've started to look beyond the campus alone.

We've got folks who are 25 and folks who are 85, alumni whose experiences were shaped by World War II, and those whose experiences were shaped by the Vietnam War or 9/11. What is the common denominator?
The campus is ever-changing and ever-evolving. I think the alumni get that. While they have a certain sense of nostalgia about their own time here, they also recognize that as Berkeley continues to go into the future, it may become unrecognizable to them in many respects. There will still be those things that always remain true: this is where we learned, this is where we grew, and this is where we first sparked our intellectual curiosity. This is the place that opened doors for us. You have to think about those common threads.

You're the first CAA president from a generation between the older and younger alumni. Do you feel that will give you some insight?
I do. I have strong ties to some of the generations that came before me, but I'm still very much Generation X—a population willing to adopt new technology and new ideas, and still very interested in the lives of current students. Although I think if you talk to students today, I might as well have been from a much older class. [laughs] It's hard for me to think that the students today were born during my time as a student here. The main advantage of my being a president from a newer generation is the opportunity to revisit our purpose, looking forward instead of backward. I don't want to become mired in the past. I strongly believe there's a lot of value to everything that we've done before, but we have an opportunity with a new Strategic Plan to serve the Alumni Association well for the next decade or two.

Do you think that the image of the Alumni Association is of a somewhat older generation?
Certainly that's the perception, but not necessarily the reality. Right now, I would admit that the Alumni Association probably doesn't meanas much as it could to students who are just graduating or students who have matriculated within the last 20 years. We have to change that.

You mentioned technology.
We're not effectively using the resources available to us. We're not early adopters. We're not leaders in the use of technology to reach out to alumni, and I don't think we have a culture of innovation. However, we have started and helped to build @Cal Café, a social networking site that has the same concept as Friendster, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Podcasting, which California magazine does well, is another technology which many people of my generation and later have embraced. These are new ways to communicate. But adoption of these may mean that some of our older communication styles will change or be gone.

We now expend a large amount of our resources servicing a very limited population. We almost need to flip that, expending fewer resources while reaching out to a greater population. I've been highly complimentary of California magazine because it's doing just that. But that doesn't mean ignoring those alums who are our most ardent supporters and volunteers, who have an expectation of keeping things the way they are. Going back to my church days, we called the supporters the Pillars of the Assembly—they strengthen the institution for everyone's benefit. But this naturally creates a tension—and this is true in any business, for-profit or nonprofit—that having highly specific programs can be a detriment to the greater community.

Imagine the website of your dreams.
You know what I'd love to do? I'd love to get a team at Google or Yahoo, where we have tremendous alumni populations, to come and tell us about the success of their portals and how we we can replicate that in our service offering. If I envisioned the website of my dreams, it would be one where people think of us first as a place to go. Our website must have an emotional connection as well for people to feel good about going there repeatedly. It has to make an immediate impression to the user that this is the best tool available to them because it came from Berkeley. Our technology staff is top-notch but stretched thin—we could use the assistance of some talented alumni volunteers.

The Strategic Plan, you have said, must be ambitious, broad in scope, and fiercely focused in execution. What do you mean by that?
The Board has just started reviewing our Strategic Plan, which means that every single program and service we offer should be able to answer a fundamental question: how are we maximizing our potential to reach the greatest number of alums using the available resources?

For example, let's look at the group's model, our previous Alumni Club network. We have rich networks of individuals out there, be it in Hong Kong or London or New York or the Bay Area. These are the world centers of advancement. We must start thinking about the Alumni Association servicing our alumni in those areas, finding that right volunteer in those areas who will enable us to do our work without expending tremendous personal and financial capital. We might also focus on corporations. This is why I founded an alumni group at Wells Fargo. We can identify immediately, in the Bay Area alone, 300 alums who work for Wells Fargo. Let's start groups where it makes sense to start them, and enable services such as career networking and mentorship.

With the goal of helping people from Cal do better within the company?
Absolutely. To do better within their own careers and to realize that the value of their education continues beyond their graduation. We're being called upon to help our alumni after they've graduated. They're going to be alumni far longer than they were students.

What are the best ways that you think the Alumni Association serves the University?
We can galvanize the alumni community in a greater way than the University can. For better or worse, when the University reaches out to the alumni population, it's quite suspect. They're thinking perhaps the University is only looking for a handout. That's just the nature of the beast. The University must raise funds. But the Alumni Association can actually say, "We need your support," be it a bond, or some legislative angle, or simply knowing about what the University has accomplished, without it being tainted by the perception that it's going to be a request for financial support.

How important do you think it is to collect more research on our alumni?
It's very important. For example, we know that the Alumni Association wants to reach out to those who identify as ethnically Chinese because they represent such a significant portion of the student body. We would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that, and include that information in our thinking of how we should serve alumni.

We can use the Strategic Plan we're developing to reach outward, providing the services that we think we should be providing to everyone, and not just those who have previously been here or who live near the University.

I think we're entering into a Golden Age. Even with everything we've accomplished, we recognize that we need to do more. I think it's going to be incredibly challenging—I can't wait to begin.