During UH President and System Chancellor Renu Khator’s trip to New York City, she met with UH alumni and the president of ESPN. | Thomas Dwyer/The Cougar
UH Chancellor and President Renu Khator traveled to New York City last week to visit UH alumni. She attended a reception hosted Wednesday at the Kimpton Hotel Eventi, which featured notable Houston alumni who live in New York.
Khator mingled with guests and updated alumni in attendance on the progress of the University’s “Here, We Go” billion-dollar fundraising campaign announced in January. Following the event, Khator thanked the alumni who had attended in a tweet:
To our New York alumni–I look forward to seeing you tonight for reception at 6:30pm
— Renu Khator (@UHpres) October 11, 2017
“(Khator) travels every year to cities across the country to engage with our alumni,” said UH spokesperson Mike Rosen. “She has historically traveled to places like New York, Washington, around Texas and the West Coast.”
“Each year she comes up to NYC and meets with alumni here,” explained Melissa Krisztal-Shaiman who graduated from UH with a degree in journalism in 2003 and is a member of the New York City Host Committee. “It’s a really fun event and an awesome opportunity for us to meet and speak with Dr. Khator. She just talks with us. We talk about the university and how we stay involved and how the university can help us get a more active alumni group.”
Along with her primary goal of meeting with New York alumni, Khator also met with John Skipper, the president of ESPN and co-chairman of Disney Media Networks, on Friday.
Rosen said the meeting was a courtesy visit in her capacity as the chair of the American Athletic Conference’s Board of Directors, a role she began after the AAC’s annual meeting in June. Khator will remain chair of the AAC board until Aug. 2019.
She tweeted after the meeting, saying it was “productive.”
A big thanks to our New York Alumni…it was wonderful to see you all last night. Please come and visit campus soon!
— Renu Khator (@UHpres) October 12, 2017
“It is an important part of her job to engage alumni and to activate them,” Rosen said. “That’s a huge benefit to our University today and for many years that we have an actively engaged alumni.”
Before leaving New York, Khator tweeted she also saw a performance of the Broadway musical Wicked.
