Social network for B-school alums debuts

Fith more than 250 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is the world’s leading business networking website, but up until now it’s been difficult for Freeman alumni to use LinkedIn to connect and communicate with fellow alumni.

That changed in March with the introduction of Freeman Connect. The new site, developed in partnership with Graduway, a London-based provider of alumni networking platforms, enables alumni to sync their LinkedIn accounts with their alumni profiles to create a social network exclusively for the Freeman community. Users can post photos, search for classmates and send messages to fellow alumni regardless of their LinkedIn connections. Users can also view jobs posted by other users.

“The beauty of Freeman Connect is that it leverages the power of LinkedIn, a platform that virtually all of our alumni use on a daily basis,” says Leonard Williams, director of the Freeman School’s Career Management Center. “The challenge in the past was getting alumni to update and maintain their profiles. With Freeman Connect, all that information is already up-todate through LinkedIn, so when an alumnus signs in, he or she has immediate access to a large, incredibly diverse network of Freeman alumni.”

Freeman Connect opened to current Freeman students in April, providing those future alums with a powerful tool to build their professional networks and alumni with the opportunity to mentor students and help them break into the career of their choice.

Freeman Connect is a sister site of sorts to Tulane Connect, which the Tulane Alumni Association recently launched as a social network for all university alumni. Freeman alumni are welcome to join both networks, but Tulane Connect members who are not graduates of the business school cannot access Freeman Connect.

For more information about Freeman Connect, contact Williams at lwilli5@tulane.edu or 504-862-8492 or Rhonda Brown at rhondab@tulane.edu or 504-862-8470.