We are alumni to all our shared experiences. This book navigates us through the alumni identity most familiar to us: our university experience. What would it be like if our alumni experience was quantum instead of linear? Becoming savvy, informed alumni citizens, we apply this learning across our whole life. We can ask:

• • How can we reflect on our formal, shared experiences as alumni experiences?

• • Where can curiosity add a new dimension to our lives?

• • What passion can we follow and foster?

• • Where can we channel our generosity?

Let's promote our Alumni Way thinking across all our shared experiences. We may have attended or graduated from several different alma maters. Within our alma maters, there may be colleges, departments, subject of study, sports, clubs, activities that shaped our university experience. It's the same for our shared experiences outside the university. We can extend our Alumni Way thinking to the networks that together form our full identity. Our wider alumni capital holds even more transformative power. It can transform our personal and professional lives. It can create positive impact in our communities.

We are all connected by one word: Alumni. This was the title of my TEDx talk in 2018. It wasn't my first choice. I was challenged to present a talk to resonate with the wider audience. I needed to rethink the power of alumni beyond the academy. These traits and ideas are easily adaptable elsewhere. We have alumni-ness in so many avenues of our life. That's the universal nature of these ideas in my TEDx talk and along the Alumni Way.

Believe the Alumni Way is universal, transformational, and inclusive

We are all alumni. We reclaimed this word as inclusive not exclusive. We are all welcome members of our alumni communities. While it is inclusive for our own personal experience, the term ‘alumni’ is also universal. Universities don't own a patent on alumni connection. It's open to anyone who wishes to reconnect with their past, formal shared experiences of life. We belong to dozens of alumni groups, whether we acknowledge them or not.