On 23 January 2017 the second event within the BGHS series Meet the Alumni took place in the BGHS-Lounge. Two BGHS alumni – Andrés Cardona and Rory Tews – shared their experiences with BGHS doctoral researchers and talked about their career paths after having completed their dissertations.

Andrés Cardona has become as a self-employed expert for networking in Berlin. His professional work is strongly linked with his dissertation Social Closure in Markets, Families and Networks, in which he focused on network analysis. His company helps consultants and organizations with different tools of network analysis to understand and manage the complexity of social relationships in communities, organizations and markets. One of his clients is the start-up company Roots of Impact, whose goal is to make impact investing and development financing more effective.

Roots of Impact joins the two alumni: Rory Tews is working as a programme manager for the company and is responsible for advising social enterprises. So his expertise is also directly connected with his dissertation project about Social entrepreneurship in Germany.

During the discussion, both guests talked about their working days between office work and traveling. They pointed out that while working on their dissertations, both of them have already thought about later work activities and planned first steps for their careers. Rory Tews highlighted, that the career brigde programme of the BGHS had been very helpful for him to start his career at Roots of Impact.

The series Meet the Alumni will be continued in summer term 2017. Further information on the more than 100 alumni of the BGHS can be found on the BGHS website: www.uni-bielefeld.de/bghs/Personen/Alumni/

• Andrés Cardona: Social Closure in Markets, Families, and Networks. Explaining the emergence of Intergroup Inequality as a Result of Exclusionary Action across Contexts (Alumni-Profile)


• Rory Tews: Social entrepreneurship in Germany: A Bourdieuan Perspective (Alumni-Profile)