As of July 1, Christine Simmons became the new president of the UCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors. The president and chief operations officer of the Los Angeles Sparks brings more than a decade of leadership experience in creating strategic alliances, leading business development and driving corporate initiatives to the role, most recently serving as executive vice president of Magic Johnson Enterprises. Her background includes working with most of the Fortune 500, including major brands such as NBCUniversal and Disney, to create synergistic partnerships between those corporations and the business community nationally. Simmons shares her vision for her two-year term leading UCLA Alumni.

My UCLA experience was very different from many of my counterparts on the board. I wasn’t aware of the Alumni Association as a student or as a recent grad. It wasn’t until I got involved with Black Alumni Association as a volunteer and as a board member did I become more aware of the Alumni Association and its programs.

My early memories of UCLA were going to support the hunger strike for the Chicano Studies Center and protesting Prop 187 and Prop 209. I remember mentoring and tutoring young kids of color in Watts, and doing blood pressure screenings on Crenshaw Boulevard for those with hypertension. My involvement in organizing and leadership as an undergrad set the foundation of my engagement at UCLA.

Organizing, advocacy, community service, and working my way through school - that was MY UCLA and I loved it because it made me who I am today. Everybody has their own UCLA experience. That’s what makes our campus so beautiful, our body of alumni who bring those amazing experiences and perspectives to the table. In the climate that we have today, understanding each other is what will get us through these trying times that our nation is facing, as well as our campus for that matter.

I chose to serve because of all the different communities and constituents that UCLA affects, whether it’s the talented students that come and become amazing alumni, or the impact UCLA has on our communities and the nation through our research, advocacy and accomplishments. Engaging and empowering people, and helping lead them to a designated vision and result is what I’ve done as an undergrad and as a professional.

Every industry has Bruin leaders affecting change. Giving people a voice so they can affect change and make an impact is what we Bruins are all about. Stepping up to lead that group of people is a blessing for me and I’m humbled to do it.

In my first 100 days as president, I want to focus on careers, the Centennial Campaign and engagement. How can we support alumni throughout the complete lifecycle of their careers? From the moment they graduate, to when they’re mid-level managers, to when they go off on their own as entrepreneurs or the C-suite, how can we become a catalyst for their development and advancement? The same goes for UCLA’s Centennial Campaign, how can alumni contribute and make a bigger impact to this historic moment for the university? I will also continue to ramp up our engagement platform, connecting with as many Bruins as possible. That way every voice is heard and we are truly engaging the more than 450,000 alumni. Thankfully, my predecessor Albert Lemus laid a great foundation for success.

I’m a fan of constant innovation, otherwise we’re going to become complacent. How do we work more efficiently and more creatively, so we work smarter and not harder? Technologically, we need to stay ahead of the curve. We need to meet alumni where they are. For some that means connecting online; for others it’s a face-to-face interaction.

We’ve done a lot of amazing bridge-building across UCLA departments and schools. Whether it’s athletics, extension, career services or life sciences, we want to help them with their initiatives, because we represent all these entities. Rather than all of us reinventing the wheel, we can come together and deepen our impact for the benefit of UCLA. We want to be the leaders on campus in bringing people together.

I love it when other leaders come to present their initiatives at our board meetings. We want to continue the conversation and dialog around new ideas, but once we meet about it, then we need to have a plan on what we’re going to do. I’m a true driver at heart, so it’s not enough that we talk about it, we need to make an impact and accomplish something.

At the end of the day, this is a completely volunteer board. We didn’t come just to sit around a table and look at bylaws, we came to give back to a university that’s given so much to us and make an impact. That’s why we joined. This is a working board and each member wants to make a difference. So in these conversations with campus departments, we want to know how we can help and we’ll find a way to get alumni involved.

Case in point, UCLA Life Sciences reached out to us about an initiative on recruiting and retaining more African American and Latino students. The school wanted to engage their amazing alumni to show success stories that have happened. I myself was a physiological science major though I never went on to pursue a medical degree. I reached out to some of my colleagues and friends who were in the life sciences. When they got involved, it evoked an emotion within them that inspired them to come back to campus after many years.

At the end of my term, I want us to be seen as a model for alumni engagement. But we need to have tangible results to show our success. In the example of life sciences, X number of alumni who got involved returned to the university and helped recruit X number of life science students. These are the metrics that I want to look back at and say this is the measurable impact we had across all the different initiatives.

Serving on the Alumni Association board is an honor we don’t take lightly. We’re holding ourselves accountable. We have to show results for the university and our alumni and to be that beacon for our students so they can see what’s to come after they graduate from this amazing place.