GSB Alumni Regional Chapters
Regional chapters are the closest thing GSB alumni have to a local front door, but most people show up once and never turn a hello into a real introduction. Here is how to use a chapter as an actual referral pipeline.
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… plus everyone else in your network who can put in a good word.
See who can refer you in - pick your target company:
Where regional chapters actually live
GSB alumni chapters are organized by city or region and run by volunteer alumni, not by a central staff, so the front door is different for each one. Start at the Stanford GSB Alumni Community portal and the broader Stanford Alumni Association directory, then search your metro to find the chapter page, its LinkedIn or WhatsApp group, and the volunteer lead listed as the contact.
Chapters in dense metros like New York, San Francisco, and London run frequent small events (dinners, sector meetups, coffee mornings), while smaller regions may only gather a few times a year. Join the chapter email list first so you see events early, because the useful ones cap attendance and fill fast.
How to turn a chapter into introductions
A chapter is only a referral engine if you give people a reason to remember and vouch for you. Do these before you ever ask for anything.
- Message the chapter lead first. Volunteer leads know who works where in the region. A two-line note that says you are a GSB alum new to the city and job searching in a named sector gets you pointed at the right members faster than any event.
- Pick sector events, not mixers. A finance dinner or a healthcare panel puts you next to alumni in your target field, so the shared thing is school plus industry, which is a far stronger reason to help than a generic happy hour.
- Follow up within 24 hours. Reference one specific thing the person said, then make helping you cost 30 seconds: ask for one name at one company, not a broad favor. Specific and small gets a yes.
- Give before you ask. Offer a candidate referral, an intro, or a useful link to a chapter contact first. Alumni who have already helped you are the ones who introduce you later without being chased.
Finding the right alum before the event
The hard part is not attending, it is knowing which of the hundreds of chapter members actually sits at the company you want. Before an event, pull the target company's team on LinkedIn and cross-check for GSB alumni in your region, so you walk in already knowing who to find and what you share.
This is the finding-and-ranking step FindWarmIntros does for you: you name a target company and it surfaces the real people there who share your school or a past employer, ranked by how strong the overlap is, and drafts a warm intro that leads with the connection instead of the ask. Use it to build a short list of GSB alumni at your targets, then let the regional chapter be the room where you meet them in person.