John Clamme is the Cal Alumni Association’s next executive director and chief executive officer. Although he is not a Cal alum, he has held leadership positions at Cal Athletics and the Haas School of Business. Most recently, Clamme served in Deloitte’s Higher Education practice, where he advised universities nationwide on strategy, operations, technology, and organizational change.
Clamme is from Carmel, Indiana which he affectionately refers to as “Carmel by the Cornfield.” He attended Wabash College whose colors, unfortunately, are red and white. Clamme says he is happily retiring those colors in favor of blue and gold. “This is now the third time that I’m on campus, and Cal has impacted my life in a very, very positive way.” In his previous tenures with the university, he was struck by how deeply invested Golden Bears were in one another. At both Haas and in Athletics, he said that anytime he reached out to alums for support, doors were always open. Alums told him, “Come to my office. I’ll meet you. Give me an excuse to come back to Berkeley.” He adds, “It’s a testament to their love for the school.”
In both of his previous campus positions, his focus was corporate partnerships, an area that he intends to continue prioritizing at CAA. “What we have here is a very valuable thing in our nearly 600,000 alums. They’re well educated, affluent, and many of whom still live in the Greater Bay area, so it makes a lot of sense for partners and sponsors to want to promote their message to these 600,000 people.” In addition to corporate partnerships, Clamme hopes to leverage his past fundraising experience to advance CAA’s mission.
In his personal life, Clamme’s two sons, ages 5 and 7, and his wife Jennifer keep him busy. Like his university counterpart, Chancellor Rich Lyons, he also loves to play the guitar. In fact, the two worked together at Haas and sometimes played together. “Rich was my boss at Haas and at every business school get together he would always pull out the guitar.”
When asked if there was anything else he wanted to communicate to CAA members, he said, “I feel very honored and grateful to be chosen for this role. You hear about people who got scholarships to come to Cal and it changed their lives. Cal gave me this opportunity to be the executive director at the CAA. And I too, am very grateful for all the things that I’ve learned and people that I worked for. While this is only day two, I’m very, very grateful and proud to be in the role.”
The feeling is mutual here at CAA. Welcome aboard, John!
