A Letter from the President

In the Spring of 2006 I suggested to the other few members of the Brown Alumni Club of Phoenix steering committee that we consider organizing an event with the other Ivy alum groups in the area. Why? Because getting more than 10 Brown alums to show up at any given event seemed difficult and I thought that perhaps other area Ivy clubs might be experiencing something similar. The others on the Brown Alumni club steering committee looked at me and said ‘Go for it.”

That led to the formation of an ‘organizing committee’ made up of alums of some of the Ivy alum groups (the ones I could find), who I approached to see if they’d like to join me in organizing a cocktail reception. Because no alum group could project having more than “zero to ten” alums from their school group show up, we expanded the organizing committee to include various alums of the Seven Sisters and  a few of the so-called “potted Ivies” I could find (Wesleyan, Amherst, Williams). With this core group, we all felt ‘reasonably’ confident we’d get 20 alums to show up at The Royal Palms.  Once we sent out the initial announcement, we quickly got 200 RSVPs, had to ‘close’ the RSVP list and began a wait-list. Taking into account about 60 no-shows and 20+ walk-ins we had a little over 160 people on the lawn, outside of T Cook's on a beautiful, cool December evening.

This then led to the formation of the Phoenix Ivy Council, whose board, made up of representatives of the original organizing committee, was established in May 2007. The Ivy Council has since sponsored a fund-raiser with the ASU Art Museum, sponsored two events with the Phoenix Symphony, begun to hold quarterly happy hours (the first one in June 2008 had 82 attendees), held another winter reception in January of 2008 (that one at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, with another 160+ in attendance) and formed a Philanthropy Committee, an Arts Committee, a Q&A Series, launched this website and taken on the planning of the Spring Ivy Tennis tourney (that had been planned for 6 or so years single-handedly by Dr. Ron Fischler, Harvard alum, who finally said “Uncle”).

This group of people, through their similar educational experiences at some of the finest colleges in the country, seem to have a shared value to ‘pursue excellence’ – in a variety of ways. But the Ivy Council strives to foster not just camaraderie among its underlying alums – but through its actions, also jointly demonstrate support for Phoenix as it continues to evolve – especially through support of the arts, education and philanthropy. At this early stage, each person who gets involved can have an impact. Please join us or consider supporting the Ivy Council in some respect – and help uncover opportunities for others to learn about the Ivies and, along the way, join some other Ivy alums who want to find ways to make living in Phoenix a slightly richer experience.



Doug Heller
President
Phoenix Ivy League Council