Shanghai calling

Our newest regional group of Richmond alumni happens to be in China.

You read that right. With help from the alumni events office and the volunteer leadership of Neville Hemming, ’12, the group began programming earlier this year. Around 45 alumni live around Shanghai, according to Mary Alice Wallmeyer, assistant director of alumni events. We asked Hemming a few questions to satisfy our curiosity about Spider alumni around the world.

How’d you end up in Shanghai?
It’s funny. Richmond is actually the reason why I’m in China. I didn’t want to retake Spanish for the language requirement, and a friend recommended trying out Chinese. I had an opportunity to study abroad here, loved it, and wanted to come back.

How did you connect with other Spiders in the region?
I first moved here two years ago and looked online to connect with people. There was no city contact for Shanghai with the alumni office, so I reached out. I did a lot of LinkedIn searching and found some folks through word-of-mouth.

How hard is it to stay connected to the University from abroad?
It’s a bit challenging to maintain a connection with America in general. It’s harder to communicate. For me, I’ve been connecting with friends and fellow alumni. I was in Vietnam a few weeks ago for work and got to catch up with a good friend who had just gone to his five-year reunion in May. I really enjoyed hearing about that in advance of my own five-year reunion next year.
When we did our event in September here, we had someone from admission. That’s pretty amazing — it was nice to hear from her what’s going on at the University.

Where do you hope to see the group in the next few months? What about the next five years?
It would be fun to organize some Olympic watch stuff. Later this summer, we’ll have a more official University-sponsored event. In five years, I’d like to see a Beijing group. We have a city contact in Hong Kong, but if we got a group going in south China, we’d have one in each of the three main economic hubs. It would be great to see a group across those regions.