R. Erich Caulfield SM ’01, PhD ’06 began as President of the MIT Alumni Association on July 1, 2019. He earned his SM and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. While earning his Course 6 degrees, Caulfield was elected president of the Graduate Student Council (GSC), and he later served on the MIT Corporation. He has received the Harold E. Lobdell ’17 Distinguished Service Award, Karl Taylor Compton Prize, MLK Leadership Award, and accepted the William L. Stewart, Jr. Award on behalf of the advisory group, which he co-chaired. He has served two terms on the MIT Corporation, where he chaired the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee on Institute-Wide Affairs (CJAC) and the Screening Committee for the nomination of recent graduates, and served on numerous Visiting Committees and other Institute advisory groups. As founder and president of the Caulfield Consulting Group in New Orleans, he’s not far from where he grew up in southern Louisiana. Caulfield has also been a White House fellow and served as New Orleans team lead for the Obama White House’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities Initiative and chief policy advisor to Cory Booker, then mayor of Newark, New Jersey.