For more than five decades, the World Economic Forum has convened leaders across sectors to advance global cooperation and impact, with a mission that extends far beyond any individual role.
As careers have become increasingly fluid, the Forum recognised an opportunity to stay meaningfully connected with former employees in a way that reflects its mission and standards. Through this continued connection, alumni translate the Forum’s values, perspectives and ways of working into influential roles across sectors, applying the Forum’s multistakeholder and impartial approaches in their subsequent roles.
Under the name The Forum Circle, the alumni network was launched in 2024. In the following year, a dedicated digital platform (in collaboration with PeoplePath) was established and launched, bringing increased clarity, cohesion and structure to managing and engaging with this global network.
Since its launch, the Forum Circle has driven strong engagement, supported a 7% alumni rehire rate, fostered a continued sense of belonging and enabled the Forum to gather insight and maintain meaningful relationships with its global alumni network.
The Forum attracts globally minded professionals driven by a shared commitment to public‑private collaboration and societal impact. Many former employees depart to take up influential roles across industries, governments and international organizations after their time at the Forum.
While employee turnover is a natural feature of such a dynamic environment, Forum leadership recognized that each departure also represented a potential for retained goodwill and future opportunity. Rather than viewing alumni solely through a recruitment or communications lens, they chose to invest in a formal alumni ecosystem rooted in continuity. The Forum Circle was envisioned not as a static database, but as an active network that reflects the Forum’s values of collaboration, knowledge exchange and long‑term stewardship of relationships.
Forum leadership recognized that each departure also represented a potential for retained goodwill and future opportunity.
Historically, organizations have devoted far more attention to attracting and onboarding employees than to managing exits. At the Forum, this imbalance became increasingly visible as careers grew more fluid and non‑linear.
Leadership recognized that while alumni relationships already existed in some pockets of the organization, their long‑term cultivation depended on an integrated ecosystem to manage engagement. Moving the network into a dedicated digital environment would allow engagement to scale, insights to be captured more consistently and the community to be managed in a structured way over time.
This direction was supported by academic research and industry benchmarking, including PeoplePath’s Corporate Alumni Benchmarking Reports, which show that formalised, platform-enabled alumni programmes are most effective in sustaining connection, advocacy and long-term organisational learning.
By introducing a dedicated online platform and collaborating with PeoplePath, which the Forum selected for its wide technological offering and for its continuous investment in evolving the practice of alumni relations alongside its clients, the Forum enhanced an alumni network that already had strong foundations. The platform brings greater structure and transparency to alumni engagement, streamlines rehire opportunities through integrated job postings and signals of interest, and enables the World Economic Forum to benefit from alumni insight.
The platform brings greater structure and transparency to alumni engagement, streamlines rehire opportunities through integrated job postings and signals of interest, and enables the World Economic Forum to benefit from alumni insight.
The decision to launch the Forum Circle platform with PeoplePath in 2025 was guided by strong strategic intent and alignment in approaches. This was reflected in PeoplePath’s ability to deliver a comprehensive, structured alumni platform and its experience in supporting formal, platform-enabled programmes across complex global organisations.
PeoplePath’s customer service support capabilities gave the Forum confidence in their ability to evolve and customise the platform over time. This collaboration was shaped by a continuous creative and solutions-oriented exchange that allows the platform to develop in step with the Forum’s needs.
PeoplePath provided the World Economic Forum with a centralized and transparent environment with the goal of serving as a one‑stop hub for account management, communication, career opportunities and institutional and alumni storytelling.
The platform was implemented quickly and effectively within just five months, reflecting a strong and close collaboration throughout the implementation process. PeoplePath focused on bringing the Forum team’s vision and ambitions for how the platform should evolve to life, using a highly solutions-oriented approach. Appreciation was placed on the effort to further customize the platform with future needs in mind, including the use of PeoplePath’s ProfileSync feature to help keep alumni profiles up to date and sustain engagement as the community evolves. This mutual trust and flexibility enabled a smooth launch and strong engagement from the outset.
The platform has reinforced and enhanced Forum’s alumni engagement strategy, which is designed to meet alumni where they are across their career lifecycles.
What is evident is that the alumni connection is strong, reflected in consistently high engagement on an alumni-focused social channel. One weekly feature highlights memories of important institutional milestones, enabling alumni to revisit experiences and milestones that were formative in their professional lives.
Alumni also receive newsletters sharing organizational updates and participate in both in-person and virtual events that celebrate existing connections and inspire new ones.
Career mobility is embedded within the platform, with alumni able to consult and post job opportunities, and signal interest in returning to the Forum.
The impact of the Forum Circle platform has been both immediate and measurable. Within six months of onboarding, 81% of alumni who received the welcome email logged in, and a strong proportion actively engaged by updating their profiles. Alumni logged in an average of three times since launch, demonstrating sustained engagement beyond initial activation. By the end of the first year on the platform, the community had scaled to over 1000 alumni, a strong percentage of all former employees of the Forum.
Within six months of onboarding, 81% of alumni who received the welcome email logged in, and a strong proportion actively engaged by updating their profiles.
The network has also delivered clear talent outcomes. There has been a constant stream of alumni reapplicants or alumni‑driven referrals for positions at the Forum. Notably, half of these referrals supported the early careers programme, highlighting the continued engagement of early‑career alumni and their active role in supporting peers at similar stages.
The Forum alumni team has particularly valued the increased clarity and transparency enabled by the PeoplePath platform, which has strengthened how the alumni network is managed and experienced over time. This shift has made engagement more consistent and accessible, while providing a stable foundation for the Forum Circle to continue evolving and supporting the alumni community as its needs grow and change.
With a full-service alumni platform in place, the Forum now has a scalable foundation to support the continued growth and evolution of the Forum Circle. The collaboration with PeoplePath ensures the program can adapt as needs evolve, while maintaining a consistent structure for engagement, insight and connection. This positions the Forum Circle to remain relevant and responsive as both the alumni community and its role within the institution continue to develop. The Forum Circle enables the Forum to sustain alumni relationships through ongoing engagement, insight sharing and collaboration, reinforcing structured alumni programmes as long-term strategic assets.
Thank you to WEF for sharing their story with us. If you’d like to see the PeoplePath platform in action, please contact us to schedule a demo today.
Note: All figures reflect internal reporting at the time of writing.
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