Corwin Cambray, U of T Alumni Association president, on why the Defy Gravity campaign excites and inspires him

Apr 17, 2024

Corwin Cambray wearing a suit, smiling, standing on a rooftop balcony with the CN Tower in the background.

Corwin Cambray (MScPl 1999) is a Toronto city planner who helps shape growth and infrastructure investment for the benefit of the local community. He became the 2023-2024 University of Toronto Alumni Association (UTAA) president after serving on the association’s board of directors for seven years and volunteering with U of T for more than 20. He answered questions about his motivations for volunteering, why mentorship benefits U of T students and why the Defy Gravity campaign excites and inspires him.

How did you come to volunteer with the University of Toronto Alumni Association?

Growing up, U of T was always part of my family life. My mum is a Trinity graduate, and whenever we visited Toronto as kids, we would go to campus for different activities. But I first attended U of T in the fall of 1997 as a graduate student, pursuing a two-year Master of Science in Planning degree in the Department of Geography and Planning.

After I graduated, I joined the Planning Alumni Committee, which is the volunteer group for graduates of that program. I contributed to it for nine years until 2010 including a term as president.

After this, the School of Graduate Studies asked me to be their representative on the College of Electors, which is responsible for electing alumni governors to the Governing Council and electing the chancellor. It’s a very meaningful body. I was privileged to be involved in the re-election of Chancellor David Peterson and then the election of Chancellor Michael Wilson.

I get a lot of energy from connecting with and learning from fellow alumni as well as faculty, staff and students. I also get a sense of energy and renewal every time I visit campus.

I sat on the College of Electors through 2013 and, when I finished my term there, was asked to join the UTAA board as a director in 2016. This is my eighth year on the board. One of the roles I held on the UTAA board was vice-president of governance, who is also the chair of the College of Electors. Throughout each of these roles, I’ve been able to grow into leadership, and it’s been just a wonderful experience.

I get a lot of energy from connecting with and learning from fellow alumni as well as faculty, staff and students. I also get a sense of energy and renewal every time I visit campus.

What does the UTAA do?

It’s been working to strengthen the connection between alumni and the university since the 1840s. Today we’re a board of 14 directors whose focus is to encourage alumni participation in the life of the university and advance its interests. We do that through four broad baskets. The first covers awards, scholarships and events. The second is around constituency relationships and partnerships – our connections with alumni associations in divisions across all three campuses. The third focuses on fundraising and donations and the fourth concerns university governance.

We also have four standing committees: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Mentoring; the Nominating Committee; and the Soldiers’ Tower Committee.

The UTAA also supports U of T’s mission by coordinating alumni leaders from across the university’s many faculties, colleges and campuses. We come together through the Council of Presidents and ask questions like how are alumni associations pivoting in a post-pandemic world? We facilitate a transfer of knowledge across the community, which helps other associations connect with their alumni to make engagement instances more frequent and stronger.

As well, the UTAA believes that one of the values of getting involved with the university is that alumni can then become informed ambassadors for the university. They can then bring forward the university’s story in different personal or professional contexts. We try to be a conduit and facilitator of beneficial and inspiring U of T stories. This is a broader way that the UTAA is always adding value to our university.

What do you get out of volunteering?

Volunteering is a dual proposition for me. First, I get a lot of energy from connecting with and learning from fellow alumni as well as faculty, staff and students. I also get a sense of energy and renewal every time I visit campus. The other thing is, I like to marry quite closely my volunteer contributions – not only to the university but also my own personal and professional growth.

Volunteering is an investment in yourself but also exposes you to a wonderful network. You meet alumni from all sorts of careers and sectors. Also, our time at the university as students was successful in part because of other people. So, volunteering is an opportunity to pay it forward.

What excites you about the Defy Gravity campaign?

The alumni engagement goals! I’m excited about the transformative change that will come with inspiring 225,000 alumni to get involved as volunteers, mentors, donors, participants, and leaders and encouraging them to contribute their time and talent to the university one million times collectively.

Alumni communities are in all four corners of the globe. So, in addition to the university having a global footprint academically, we can match that by having a worldwide, engaged alumni community.

The $4-billion fundraising goal is also tremendously exciting. This will have an impact on the academic excellence front, for sure, but also on the places and spaces that will be built on all three campuses to advance collaboration and innovation.

Alumni want to be a part of this. They’re invested and interested in the next generation of talent coming out of the university and what the university is doing with its academic heft, both in terms of teaching excellence and helping to solve big societal challenges. And the campaign will play a role in that.

How does the UTAA support the alumni engagement goals?

Well, it’s wonderful to see the alumni engagement goal right up there with the fundraising goal and we’re supporting it on different levels and formats. For example, we work closely on Alumni Reunion, coming up from May 29 to June 2, with amazing programming across the three campuses. We also include our annual meeting for all alumni during the Saturday and, this year, we will be celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Soldiers’ Tower, which will be a very significant event on the St. George campus.

The UTAA also delivers a lot of support to the university’s constituent alumni communities, which helps drive the alumni engagement goals. One of these is supporting the university’s mentoring community of practice. We bring together people who are leading mentorship programs in the respective divisions; some are staff and some are alumni. This is a shared community where everyone is learning from each other and then they can then go back to strengthen their own mentoring programs and communities.

If you make it easy for alumni, and there are different touchpoints and levels of commitment, then people are going to want to allocate their precious volunteer hours to us.

This has been a really successful program. Mentoring, as a whole, is a great way for alumni to support the university, and the amount of time they give is commensurate with the amount they have available. I personally love mentoring. I learn as much as I’m able to impart.

If you make it easy for alumni, and there are different touchpoints and levels of commitment, then people are going to want to allocate their precious volunteer hours to us.

U of T hopes students will continue to be engaged with our community long after graduation. How does the UTAA support this?

Part of it is about our ability to tell the stories of alumni success. A great example of that is the Carl Mitchell Community Impact Award. We just awarded it to Douglas Elliott for his decades of work fighting discrimination against the 2SLGBTQI+ community. When we broadcast these stories, it demonstrates the value of remaining connected and contributing to the university.

Another way is leading by example, such as the UTAA’s $1-million donation to the Landmark Project, matched by the university. In recognition of this, U of T renamed the area outside of Convocation Hall as Alumni Plaza. Many of us, as students, walked through those doors for lectures, and then, on graduation day, we walked out to join a global community of alumni. To have it named Alumni Plaza recognizes UTAA’s long-term contributions to students and campus spaces.

What is your vision for the UTAA?

I’d like to encourage alumni participation in the life of the university on a global scale. Many of our alumni are in the Greater Toronto Area, but we have tremendous alumni populations across the globe. How do we strengthen these connections?

The other part of my vision is to support alumni associations in divisions to encourage distributed leadership. No single group is responsible for engaging the university’s 680,000 alumni, so let’s make sure we’re building everyone’s capacity. By doing that, we’ll be able to unlock discretionary energy – I like this term, and I’ve actually borrowed it from Chancellor Patten’s recent book. If you make it easy for alumni, and there are different touchpoints and levels of commitment, then people will want to allocate their precious volunteer hours to us.

And as long as we continue to do that, we’ll far surpass that alumni engagement goal of 225,000.