Ryan Ruskin ’90: ‘Our Princeton, our time’

Ruskin’s leadership theme for the next two years — “Our Princeton, our time” — reflects both this shared identity and his leadership team’s vision for engaging alumni. Along with celebrating everything that makes the alumni community special, this means leveraging the Alumni Association’s 200th anniversary next year in partnership with Alumni Engagement to enhance engagement activities while identifying and reaching alumni who haven’t connected lately. “I want to make sure that everyone feels that this is their place — that Princeton belongs to all of us,” he said.

Can you explain some of the thinking behind your leadership theme?

“Our Princeton, our time” builds on the sense of belonging that Monica [Moore Thompson ’89] captured in her “We are Princeton” theme. It embraces what we have in common while celebrating our uniqueness as individuals. I want to make sure everyone feels that Princeton belongs to all of us, because this community provides so much value to us as undergraduate and graduate alumni.

This is also our time to celebrate the 200 years we’ve been together and the 200 years to come. Princeton is famous for our traditions and we’re also proud of our evolution. It was the traditions that brought me to campus, but it’s the evolution of the school that makes me proud to be an alum every day.

So, the theme is about all of us seeing ourselves as Princetonians and recognizing the relevancy of our time together both when we were students and in this moment.

Does having highly engaged alumni help?

Most definitely. We are grateful for our partnership with the University’s Alumni Engagement team in Advancement. There are certainly metrics pointing to what Princeton alumni have in common, which is that we engage, we participate, we show up, we reach out and we respond. And as a priority, I’m focused on engaging more and more alums — from recent alumni stepping out into the world to the Old Guard — and using the structures we have in place to further encourage that engagement.

At its core, the Alumni Association strives to meet alumni where they are and address their unique and specific needs. We work with Alumni Engagement in University Advancement to provide in-person and virtual engagement opportunities and activities and to supply the resources to fill alumni needs. With that support, the regions, classes and affinity groups bring engagement opportunities to alumni where they live around the world. Wherever they find themselves, we want them to feel that this is our Princeton and our time.

What are you looking forward to this year?

The Alumni Association will soon be celebrating its 200th anniversary, so our top priority is figuring out how to activate this milestone to rally and engage the entire alumni community. When you think about it, it’s amazing how the Alumni Association has continually evolved over time to meet the needs of more than 101,000 alums. The engagement staff and the volunteers are continuously challenging ourselves to find ways to engage more and more alumni and to meet them where they are.

If we were to chat again like this in two years, what is the challenge that would make you the proudest to say you successfully met?

We always want to leave places better than we find them — to move the ball forward as it were. In two years, I want to say that we connected with significant number of alumni who previously weren’t engaged with Princeton. There’s a place for everyone in the alumni community and the alumni experience. And if any individual or group of individuals feels that there isn’t a place for them, then there’s work to do. And that’s where our work is going to focus. And that’s going to come through listening to what people want out of their engagement experience, what they’re missing and how we can help fill the gap. We have the infrastructure and we have the people in place to deal with any challenge. We’ve been doing it for 200 years.