History of the Association
The initiative for foundation Ada Alumni began in 2020, when four students at the end of their studies, Laura Kuntze, Floris Tulner, Niekie van Uum and Nicky van den Berg, and an alumnus, Wesley Brants, thought of what the advantages would be to have an alumni association. This association would fill the gap that was created after graduating. In the time after studies, one could lose contact with people you would have spent your entire time as a student with. To keep in touch with GEWIS and the people you have met there, Ada was born. Ada would offer the possibility to keep in touch with your fellow students, wherever in the world they would be. It would also give the possibility to, besides keeping in touch online, organize physical activities.
In the beginning information regarding other alumni-associations was gathered. Romy Schellekens, the Commissioner of Internal Affairs of the 38th board of GEWIS, helped greatly with that. With this information, guidelines and plans were created. Also, a sounding board group was created and later also a private Facebook-group, in which information was gained regarding what prospecting members would like.
As liaison of the 39th board of GEWIS, Jealy van den Aker joined Ada. With her help, more guidelines were defined and we could keep into account the newly defined type of member of GEWIS, the alumni-membership. Jealy also helped with the development of the logo and she was the person of contact for the SEP-group Goni, who developed a website for us.
In the summer of 2021, we organized a brainstorm session with some of our future beneficiaries, with whom we discussed our plans, and whom we asked for input on a variety of topics. This session helped us in our final stages, during which we finished all our ongoing projects, like a communication platform, database, website and our registration with the Chamber of Commerce (KvK). On April 14th 2022, we were officially founded as a foundation.