INTERNATIONAL ALUMNI CHAPTERS HELP BOLSTER GW’S WORLDWIDE COMMUNITY
When his firm sent him abroad two years ago to launch the business overseas, Aaron Bates, ESIA BA ’98, needed a way to meet people in his new home. He sought out the GW Alumni Association in London to get him started.
“On moving to London, I was looking for ways to network and meet people,” said Bates, who now leads the Alumni Association’s London chapter. “One of my first stops was the GW Alumni Association. Considering the international nature of the student body at GW, I thought we were bound to have graduates living and working in London.”
He was right. Not only does GW have many graduates living in London, the university has alumni in more than 145 countries across the globe, totaling more than 7,500 alumni living abroad.
During his first week working at Merrill Lynch, Sid Choraria, SEAS MS ’03, looked up fellow company employees in GW’s alumni database and found Jimmy Quigley, ESIA BA ’82, chairman of Merrill Lynch International. Not long after meeting him, Choraria was on a plane to Asia – taking some career advice Quigley had given him. 
Erik Doman, ESIA MA ’98, recently deployed to Afghanistan. Erik, a former foreign service officer with the State Department and founder of Global Migration Group, an Immigration consultancy based in the Philippines, is currently serving as an Infantry soldier in Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. Erik took a sabbatical to volunteer for service in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team in the southeast. The PRTs play a key role in the US strategy to bring development and reconstruction aid to the people of Afghanistan, while suppressing the Taliban and Al Qaida.
