Jennifer MacCormack is the Senior Director of Annual Philanthropy and Advancement Analytics at the University of Washington. In her role, Jennifer is responsible for building strategies that lead to a robust base of philanthropic support and pipeline growth, bring data and analytical insights into fundraising and engagement decision making, and transform the way we build meaningful relationships with our constituents through digital pathways. Jennifer has worked more than 15 years in fundraising, prospect development and analytics. She served on the Board of Directors for APRA and has volunteered with CASE, AFP, and Annual Giving Directors Consortium. Prior to her career in Advancement, she worked for years in the Middle East as an archaeologist studying the growth of early urban centers and fulfilled a childhood dream to work at a museum during her tenure as a research associate at the Smithsonian.

Jessica Mandra is a marketing and communications professional with over 15 years of experience developing storytelling campaigns for print and digital channels. Prior to joining Harper College, Jessica worked at Northwestern University, Lipman Hearne, Liska + Associates. Currently at Harper College, Jessica is the creative lead for video and photography at William Rainey Harper College, one of the largest community college in Illinois. Jessica holds a Master in Management in Higher Education Administration and has taught design courses at Harper. Through the creation of the student photography team, Jessica was able to triple the amount of original content, enabling the college to move away from stock photography to more authentic content that resonates with students. She has managed the student team creating content for digital campaigns and channels for the past five years. She enjoys working with the students, mentoring them and watching them grow their skills and confidence.

Dr. Shalonda Martin is an Advancement Services professional and DEI strategist with over 19 years of experience. She has led teams at Pepperdine University, UCLA, USC, and currently at Pomona College. She specializes in designing quality assurance programs, leading change efforts, developing and curating DEI content, and developing comprehensive strategies grounded in equity. Dr. Martin is the Sr. Director of Advancement Services at Pomona College and is also the founder of SM Coaching and Consulting. She has a BS and MS from Pepperdine University and an EdD in Org Change and Leadership from USC, where her dissertation examined the paucity of women of color in higher education.   

Dr. Martin serves as a member of the programming committee for the Association for Advancement Services Professionals (AASP) and is the Vice Chair of the planning committee for the Case DRIVE conference. She has also served as a faculty member for the Case Summer Institute for Advancement Services, and the Case Gift and Records Workshop. Additionally, she served as a graduate student coach, guest lectures, and engages in public speaking on various topics.

As Vice President for University Relations and Enrollment Management at West Virginia University, Sharon Martin leads the marketing, communication and recruitment strategies for the University. Prior to her arrival at WVU in 2013, Sharon led the brand and creative teams at Purdue University. Her career also includes owning a boutique marketing agency, where she co-founded a local women’s magazine. She worked for the Purdue Alumni Association for 13 years, serving as director of communications and editor of the alumni magazine. Sharon serves on the WVU Alumni Association Board of Directors and has served on the boards of several professional associations including National Mortar Board, Association of Women in Communications, the American Marketing Association and the American Cancer Society. When she’s not at her day job, Sharon is hanging out with her husband, David, and their three teenagers who are busy on their devices — until she turns off the wifi.

Amy Matsubara is Prospect Analyst at the University of British Columbia supporting prospect researchers and fundraisers. Prior to that role, she worked with a variety of faculty and alumni teams as a prospect researcher. She also has fifteen years of data analysis experience as a post-secondary institutional researcher in the United States and Canada.

Nick McLaren is the Executive Director of the Michigan State University Alumni Office. Over the course of his 20-year MSU career, McLaren has worked for Michigan State Unversity in Annual Giving, for College of Agriculture and Natural Resources as a Development offcier and his prior role as Senior Director of Advancement for the College of Social Science. While at the College of Social Science he developed an advancement strategy working with the university’s largest college alumni base of over 100,000 and strategically prioritizing major gifts prospects. He personally secured over $42 million in support for the University during the last $1.8B campaign and have assisted in leading a team in exceeding our College’s campaign goal of $60 million by over 10%. The Alumni Office is responsible for: Homecoming events; Grandparent’s University; the prestigious Alumni Grand Awards program, recognizing outstanding alumni; Spartan Pathways, a popular travel program; Spartans Will. Serve; some athletics-affiliated events; and class reunions. McLaren has focused much of the past two years on partnering with development on metrics to increase engagement of our 500,000 alumni. His rolehas also expanded now to include annual giving programs, which includes MSU’s successful annual day of philanthropy, Give Green Day.

Tere Mendoza is Interim Vice President of University Advancement at California State University San Marcos. She has over 30 years of service at institutions of public higher education leading the divisions of University Advancement. During her career, Tere has served as Vice President at San Diego State University and Interim Vice President at Cal State Fullerton, San Jose State and Cal Poly Pomona.

Prior to her current position, she served as Senior Advisor in the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor providing strategic counsel to presidents and executive leaders at each of the 23 campuses. Her expertise includes all aspects of campaign planning and management, major gift fundraising strategies, managing volunteer boards, leadership coaching and staff mentoring. Outside the CSU System, she served as Executive Vice President of the Arizona State University Foundation, Campaign Director for ASU’s Campaign for Leadership and as Special Advisor to the President at the University of New Mexico.

Tere is a CASE Laureate and has served as chair of the CASE National Committee on Institutionally Related Foundations, CASE Commission on Philanthropy and a District VII board member. She holds a B.A. in International Affairs and Economics from George Washington University, an M.A. in Organizational and Intercultural Communication from Arizona State University and a Certificate in Fundraising Management (CFRM) from Indiana University.

Pamela Mitchell considers herself to be a multi-faceted higher education professional whose love for numbers gave way to her growing personally and professionally within Academics, Student Affairs, and currently Institutional / University Advancement. With each endeavor, she has worked closely with finance departments maintaining multi-million dollar budgets. In addition, her stint with Advancement allows her to utilize her 15 years of experience in report writing, information technology, public relations, and tax preparation.

Chandra Montgomery is an executive search consultant at Lindauer Global and a certified diversity, equity, and inclusion educator and speaker. Her background in philanthropy spans academic medicine, higher education, public media, and social services. She is an alumna of CASE’s Minority Advancement Institute and an Apra volunteer leader currently serving as chair of the Advocacy Committee. She is a founding member of the organization’s inaugural DEI Committee and founding co-chair of the Advancement DEI Task Force at the University of Southern California where she was the director of pipeline and prospect development for Health Sciences. Prior to USC, she led prospect development teams at National Public Radio and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Chandra holds a BA from Hampton University and is pursuing a master’s degree at USC’s Gould School of Law.

Since 2007, as Business Analyst & Database Specialist, Ellen has seen many changes in reporting and data use in College Relations at Davidson College. While initially spending her time with Banner data and Access database reporting, she now works in CRM creating elements with the SDK, as well as SSRS reports and Power BI reports. She is a graduate of Davidson and lives in the mountains of North Carolina.

Doug Most is a lifelong journalist and author whose career has spanned newspapers and magazines up and down the east coast, with stops in Washington, DC, South Carolina, New Jersey and Boston. He was named Journalist of the Year while at The Record in Bergen County, NJ. After a stint at Boston Magazine, he worked for more than a decade at The Boston Globe in various roles, including Magazine Editor and Deputy Managing Editor/Special Projects. His 2014 non-fiction book, The Race Underground, told the story about the birth of subways in America, and was made into a PBS/American Experience documentary. He has a BA from George Washington University in political communication.

Erin Mross (She/Her/Hers) is an Assistant Director of Alumni Engagement at UC Davis. In this role she supports California based alumni through overseeing the California Alumni Networks. Erin is also responsible for managing the Cal Aggie Alumni Association’s Leadership Scholarship for incoming students which engages hundreds of Alumni as volunteers. Her educational background is in Higher Education Administration and Student Affairs. Prior to joining the Alumni Association, Erin supported underrepresented students in UC Davis’s Living-Learning Communities and assisted students in their transition to the university.

Suresh Mudragada (he/him) is the Sr. Associate Director of Alumni Engagement at the Northwestern Alumni Association. He received his M.Ed from Loyola University Chicago and has worked at various institutions in student affairs, such as Macalester College, DePaul University and now Northwestern University. He is passionate about student and alumni engagement, community building, and creating inclusive spaces.

Lisa Murphy serves as Director of Strategic Initiatives in the office of University Development & Alumni Relations at NYU. She leads a team that partners with internal and external stakeholders to manage complex, non-standard efforts, and to focus on strategic challenges and high-impact initiatives for the division. Over the last 10 years at NYU, she was responsible for overseeing day-to-day management of Ellucian Advance - leading upgrades, system configurations, training, and access and security for the application. Prior to NYU, she was the Director of Information Services at the Harvard School of Public Health, dedicated to improving business processes, Advance data integrity, and fundraising reporting needs. With almost 20 years in advancement services, she has worked with numerous fundraising systems and has survived three database conversions.

Vivek (Vik) Narendra is the Director of CRM Strategy for the Oregon State University Foundation’s Advancement Division. In this role, Vik leads the development of an enterprise-wide business strategy for the Foundation’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. His primary focus is on leveraging digital transformation to drive change while implementing robust change management strategies that encourage the smooth adoption of new systems. He works to create the technology stack needed to sustain these transformations and always strives to develop an outstanding end-user experience. Recently, Vik and his team received the 2019 CASE Circle of Excellence Grand Gold in Advancement Services, Overall Operations award for the Foundation’s CRM conversion approach. He was also the recipient of the 2018 CASE VIII Rising Star Award. Vik holds an MS in Computer Science and an MBA from Oregon State University.

Kelly Nguyen is the associate director of stewardship at Penn State, where she oversees the annual endowment reporting process and the university-wide stewardship plan and metrics. She previously was the stewardship coordinator for Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College. Prior to moving to Penn State, Kelly worked in development at Barnard College and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. With more than a decade of experience in higher education and the arts, Kelly's areas of expertise include stewardship and donor relations strategy, donor communications, data analytics, and grant writing.

Kate Norton serves as the director of corporate and foundation relations (CFR) at Dartmouth. Kate has been successful in higher education and non-profit organization development. Over the last three years, she has strategically grown her team, overseen a doubling of proposal submissions, including to Moore, Mellon, Keck, Luce, Templeton and others, and realized a 100% increase in foundation and corporate support. Before heading the Dartmouth team, Kate was Sr. Associate Director of Foundation Relations at Princeton, where she contributed to new all-time highs private foundation support. Prior to Princeton she was at Yale Law School in a dual CFR and Major Gift Officer role, where she secured significant foundation gifts for a human rights program as well as other programs. Kate is committed to fostering diverse and inclusive workplace environment, fostering professional development of employees through internal mentorship and external training and leadership opportunities. Finally, Kate is a strong advocate for expanding communications and partnerships between Principal and Leadership Giving and Corporate and Foundation Relations, among other areas, taking a holistic approach to maximize individual and organizational engagement and stewardship. Kate received a B.A. in Studio Art and Religion from Dartmouth College and a M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Graham-Pelton Vice President Brian O’Leary is a leader in development and communications within higher education, social impact, and arts sectors. Brian has created and led successful fundraising strategies, increasing private support across giving levels ranging from annual to major giving. He has directed highly effective campaign communications teams. Brian held positions with the Rutgers University Foundation during its $1B campaign. Previous leadership roles include those at the New Jersey Audubon Society, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and the Princeton Art Association. Brian received his undergraduate degree from Rutgers University.

Laura Padron leads FIU’s major gift officers across Academics, Athletics and Student Affairs, including the newly created Development Office for Student Success. Laura returned to FIU in 2012 after five-years at University of Miami's School of Business, where she served as Assistant Dean for Development, spearheading the School’s role in the University's $1.6B campaign. Laura’s previous roles at FIU included senior director for donor relations and stewardship, establishing the institution’s first Stewardship Office of programs and services for engaging donor giving experiences, including the 2005 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Gold Award-winning Torch Society and its philanthropic commencement recognition program. Before academia, Laura was chief operating officer for programs, including the prestigious Presidential Scholars in the Arts, at the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Laura is a graduate of Florida State University and a former president-elect and board member of Miami's Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Lisa Parker is the Senior Director of Alumni Engagement for the MSU Alumni Office and oversees the execution of domestic region-based alumni engagement strategy. Team members consist of four region-specific and two affinity-specific Alumni Engagement Directors.

Miranda Peruso has nearly fifteen years of experience working in annual giving, the last twelve at her alma mater, Juniata College. She oversees a robust annual giving program consisting of phonathon, volunteer management, online communication, direct mail, giving challenges, student philanthropy (including senior class gift), mobile device solicitation, and special events. Miranda excels at juggling multiple projects and finding efficient ways to engage, cultivate, and solicit Juniata's constituents. She understands the challenges of a small shop as her direct team consists of two people and she is one of them.

Jesse Pisors has spent 25 years in educational leadership, including senior advancement positions at both private and public universities. Currently, he serves as Vice President for Advancement and External Relations at the University of Houston-Victoria, where he played a leadership role in the University of Houston System's successful $1 billion campaign. He has led his team at UHV to set multiple fundraising records since he became vice president in 2015. Jesse holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is currently finishing his doctorate at Texas Tech University. Jesse served as headmaster of a private school in Mexico for several years and is fluent in Spanish. In addition to his responsibilities at UHV, he serves on the boards of the Victoria Rotary Club, the Victoria Rotary Foundation, the Victoria Chamber of Commerce, Faith Academy and other organizations. Jesse is a CASE District IV board member and a past presenter at several CASE conferences.

Lauren Falzarano Prause is director of development for the UConn School of Fine Arts. Lauren has 20 years of development experience and fell into fundraising shortly after graduating from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. She worked in politics and healthcare development before she came to UConn in 2005 as assistant director of development, Law. In 2009, she joined Yale University as assistant director of reunion giving for three class cohorts. In 2013, Lauren returned to UConn as director of development covering multiple units. She has happily been embedded at the School of Fine Arts for the last three years and is responsible for raising more than $2.5M annually for SFA's four academic departments and nine performing and exhibiting venues. 

Lori A. Redfearn is Assistant Vice Chancellor, Systemwide Advancement for the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor. She also serves as Vice President and chief operating officer for the CSU system’s institutionally-related foundation managing $35 million in assets. Lori began service on the CASE District VII board of directors in 2011 and is currently its Chair. She also serves on the CASE Taskforce for Management Reporting Standards and the CASE Investment Committee. She previously served on the national taskforce developing the CASE Advancement Investment Metrics Study. As Assistant Vice Chancellor, Lori provides strategic leadership for 23 CSU universities by encouraging systemwide best practices, performance benchmarking and accountability standards. She oversees the analysis of institutional advancement data; coordinates training and program resources; and develops policies and procedures.

Spencer Reynolds works with Princeton campus partners to build University relationships with industry in the fields of the physical sciences and engineering. Spencer comes to CEFR from the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, where he worked in both start-up companies and large multinationals. In business, he has managed sales, marketing, and licensing; in R&D, he has managed drug development and new technology commercialization. Prior to joining the private sector, he was a US Army officer; he completed his service as a reservist. Spencer holds an AB from Princeton, and an MBA from Yale.

Joyce Q. Rogers, Esq. is a senior executive, visionary and leader with more than 20 years of experience offering a unique blend of business and legal acumen to drive success. Joyce currently serves as Interim Executive Vice President for the Indiana University Foundation responsible for the fundraising activities of the foundation to increase philanthropic support for the university. Previously, she served as the principal strategist in the development and implementation of diversity and inclusion initiatives for students, staff, alumni and friends for the university’s $3.8B capital campaign. Prior to joining the Indiana University Foundation, Joyce served as the V.P. for Development with Ivy Tech Community College with total oversight of administrative and development activities to advance private support. Joyce also previously served as the President & CEO of Indiana Black Expo, Inc. Recognized as a subject matter expert in organizational management and operational and financial strategy, she serves as a trusted advisor to a cross sector of leaders. Joyce holds a J,D. from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, and a B.S. from Indiana State University. Serving as Chair and Member of many high-profile Boards, she has been recognized in countless articles, magazines and other publications.

Zach Rubin is the Co-Founder and CEO of PBC Guru, a virtual book club management company that works with more than 200 colleges, universities, independent schools and community colleges. Zach is also the executive director of the Alumni Learning Consortium which is a partnership between dozens of colleges and universities to create high quality online alumni programs. All of Zach’s work revolves around supporting people on their journey of lifelong learning which is an area alumni organizations are in a unique position to support. Prior to founding PBC Guru, Zach earned degrees from the University of Maryland in Civil Engineering and Government & Politics and worked for a number of years as a management consultant helping large infrastructure agencies optimize their asset management programs.