Stéphanie Jossermoz (E94), Managing Director of ESSEC Alumni: “Discover Our Range of New Services!”

Stéphanie Jossermoz (E94) was appointed Managing Director of ESSEC Alumni in 2016. Lifetime membership, digitalisation, international outreach, training... Here, she takes stock of the past four transformative years that saw the accelerated expansion of the range of services available to both graduates and students, and reveals what the future has in store.

ESSEC Alumni: You’ve been in this role for four years now. What have been your main areas of work since you arrived?

Stéphanie Jossermoz: ESSEC Alumni’s work is based on five pillars, and is aimed at both graduates and students alike. The first pillar: supporting graduates and students throughout their careers. For graduates, this means supporting them whether they are seeking employment, already in a role, or starting a business, and for students, supporting them in taking their first steps and using the network to find internships or block release opportunities.  The second pillar: encouraging encounters and discussion between graduates or between graduates and students, to foster shared ideas, collective intelligence, and mutual support, and to unleash the power of the network. The third pillar: informing alumni of the latest news from the network, to inspire them and cultivate their sense of belonging. The fourth pillar: supporting graduates in lifelong learning, enabling them to adapt and play an active role in the changing world that they call home. The fifth pillar: encouraging graduates to support ESSEC and its students. 

EA: What resources do you have at your disposal to deliver these outcomes?

S. Jossermoz: We have reformed the association’s business model, shifting to lifetime membership from the moment a student joins ESSEC. In concrete terms, this means that since the start of the 2017/2018 academic year, when students matriculate at ESSEC they also join ESSEC Alumni. This is the prevailing system at English-speaking universities (Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge, etc.) and is becoming more commonplace at French Grandes Ecoles (HEC, EM Lyon, EDHEC, etc.).

EA: What are the benefits of lifetime membership?

S. Jossermoz: Firstly, it includes the entire community, rather than restricting our network and services to paying graduate subscribers; this makes us stronger individually and as a group. Secondly, it enables us to focus all of our resources on our five pillars, whereas before we spent a lot of energy and money on collecting annual subscriptions; it strengthens our offer of services. Thirdly, it enables us to stabilise and secure our financial resources, whereas before we started again from scratch every year; it bolsters our capacity for medium- and long-term investment. 

EA: Another benefit: lifetime membership brings students and participants into the fold...

S. Jossermoz: Absolutely. Students and participants become members of ESSEC Alumni as soon as they matriculate, giving them access to dedicated services from the first day of their course. This new range of services will be even further enhanced in coming months, but they already provide concrete, tailored support: in 2019/2020, we worked with around 1300 students and participants in one way or another, with an average satisfaction rate of 89%. We also opened ESSEC Alumni offices on our campuses in Cergy, managed by Marine Leoni (read her interview, here), La Défense, managed by Frédérique Muller (M19), and Singapore, managed by Ian Ong, to guarantee a permanent presence and daily support for new ESSEC generations. And Reflets ESSEC Magazine is sent out in a digital version to all students and participants.

EA: Today, 22% of ESSEC students receive scholarships from the ESSEC Foundation to cover all or part of their tuition fees. Is there a similar lifetime membership system for scholarship students? 

S. Jossermoz: A similar system for scholarship students will be in place from September 2021. We are currently finalising the details with ESSEC. ESSEC Alumni is also contributing to the welfare fund set up by the school to help students in financial hardship.

EA: What role did the school play in setting up lifetime membership?

S. Jossermoz: The school had the same level of involvement as the association, and it was a joint decision. It enables the school to foster and deepen the connection between graduates and students: students need easy access to their graduate alumni to help them plan their careers and find internships and entry level positions. It also helps ESSEC climb the international rankings: a dynamic network, its structure, and its relationship with the alma mater count for a lot in the weighting of assessment criteria. 

EA: What consequences does lifetime membership have for ESSEC Alumni in the medium term?

S. Jossermoz: The shift to lifetime membership will mechanically triple the number of members in ten years’ time, with no real change to the budget available. It is with this outlook that ESSEC Alumni is structuring its resources and investing in the tools it needs to continue satisfying its members in the medium and long term.

EA: What projects have you launched since entering your role?

S. Jossermoz: We have restructured our teams to refocus them on alumni services, notably through an overhaul of our career services driven by Frédérique Muller (read her interview, here), along with our digital project manager, Racchana Phcar, our community manager France, Stéphanie Prévost (read her interview, here), and our international community manager, Veary Ngy (read her interview, here). We have also made it a priority to accelerate the digitalisation of our services, to both make them accessible to alumni all over the world, and to adapt to new user habits. For the beginning of the 2020/2021 academic year, we launched a new website – essecalumni.com – accompanied by an app for Android and iOS (available on Google Play and the Apple Store), with a range of features: an improved directory and search engine, a diary and online box office for our events, an exclusive ESSEC job and internship platform, online coaching, a location tool to find ESSEC alumni near you, wherever you are, as well as a news and network appointments feed... So please, don’t waste any time: log on and create your account! 

EA: This would be a good time for alumni to update their profile in the directory...

S. Jossermoz: Definitely. The new website lets you update your contact details in just a few clicks. You can also get back in touch with your classmates who you lost touch with, using the dedicated tool in the top right of the home page. I’d really encourage you to use it: the more complete the directory, the stronger our network! On our end, we regularly run our own engagement campaigns, which encouraged 26% of alumni to join the website in just one year.

EA: What would you say to those who prefer LinkedIn?

S. Jossermoz: LinkedIn is a complementary tool: we also use it to coordinate our communities and we have more than 100 groups on the platform, including the official ESSEC Alumni group with 16,000 alumni, as well as the ESSEC Alumni page. But the alumni network is about more than just searching for profiles and responding to LinkedIn requests. What brings ESSEC students and graduates together is first and foremost the years they spent together on camps, a real shared experience, and one that ESSEC Alumni extends throughout your life, by organising around 300 events and get-togethers every year.

EA: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected ESSEC Alumni’s events offering? 

S. Jossermoz: The situation has led us to accelerate the development of our online events – while confirming that, in reality, we were already prepared to move in this direction. Even before France went into lockdown, we had started replacing face-to-face with online events. Since January, we have organised more than 75 webinars: careers workshops, club and chapter conferences, alumni talks, Zoom drinks... And we livestreamed our AGM.

EA: Will you keep doing ESSEC Alumni events online once COVID-19 is over?

S. Jossermoz: We firmly believe in hybrid events as the way to go, rather than 100% digital. It’s great to be able to offer a solution to those who can’t attend in person, but we will always need to get together face-to-face. It is only in these shared moments that we can rekindle and share the memories and values that connect all of us at ESSEC, and which we hold so dear.

EA: What’s new from ESSEC Alumni in 2021?

S. Jossermoz: We have just launched a range of Lifelong Learning services, split into three main categories. Firstly, the Market Intelligence content, with a selection of articles, videos, and studies, thanks to our partnership with Xerfi. Secondly, think tanks relevant to ESSEC’s chairs and our professional clubs. Thirdly, special access to ESSEC Executive Education training programmes, ranked 5th worldwide for CPD in the Financial Times. In 2021, lifetime membership will also include a digital subscription to Reflets ESSEC Magazine.

EA: What ESSEC Alumni projects do you have in store next?

S. Jossermoz: We are going to bolster our support for entrepreneurs, especially through mentoring, discussion tools, and vertical tech communities (HealthTech, MarTech, AI, FoodTech, MobilityTech, FinTech, etc.), in a direct interface with their ecosystem. In addition to this, we also hope to soon find new premises in central Paris, close to RER Line A, so that it is easy for us to welcome students and graduates to events, workshops, or to just pop in for a chat. 

Interview by Louis Armengaud Wurmser (E10), ESSEC Alumni Content Manager

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