Jay Davenport, CFRE, serves as vice president of Development and Alumni Relations for Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Health.

As VCU’s chief development and alumni officer, Jay leads fundraising and engagement efforts for the VCU enterprise, including the Monroe Park Campus, the health sciences campus and VCU Health. Areas under his purview include Advancement Solutions, alumni relations, annual giving, corporate and foundation relations, development and alumni communications, donor engagement, planned giving, presidential advancement, principal giving, regional philanthropy and the universitywide development staff.

Jay joined VCU and VCU Health in 2017 in the middle of a $750 million campaign and helped steer the campaign to a successful conclusion, raising over $840 million. In the past six years, Jay has helped VCU and VCU Health raise over $1 billion and is currently designing the first comprehensive campaign for the VCU and VCU Health.

Jay has previously led fundraising teams at Wake Forest University, including as assistant vice president of college development, assistant vice president of major gifts and associate vice president and campaign director. He has also served as director of development and team leader at Rice University and held fundraising positions as a college development director at the University of Memphis College of Business and Wright State University College of Engineering. He began his higher education career as an assistant dean of admissions at Wittenberg University.

Jay has served on the board of directors for Make-A-Wish of Greater Virginia and the Benedictine Schools of Richmond. Jay holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Xavier University and a master's degree in higher education administration from Ball State University.

Kevin Hamilton was appointed dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts in 2018. He is also a professor of new media in the School of Art and Design and previously served as senior associate dean in the college.

A member of the Illinois faculty since 2002, he holds appointments in the Media and Cinema Studies program in the College of Media and has held campus fellowships at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Center for Advanced Study. Hamilton's scholarship and artwork have earned support from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois Arts Council. Recent research on the role of photography in nuclear weapons research culminated in his book with Ned O'Gorman, Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War (Dartmouth College Press, 2018). Previous efforts include artwork on race and public memory, publication on interdisciplinary research methods, and examination of racial bias in algorithmic systems. Hamilton's training as a painter at the Rhode Island School of Design and in public art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology continues to inform his investments and approach.

Maureen J MacDonald received her Honours BSc in Chemistry from Acadia University, Canada, in 1991 and her MSc (1993) and PhD (1998) in Kinesiology from the University of Waterloo, Canada. After post-doctoral research fellowships at the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Ontario she started her academic career as a faculty member at Wilfrid Laurier University. Since 2000 she has been a faculty member in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, where she is a full professor and the Dean of Science.  

Dr. MacDonald the director of the Vascular Dynamics Laboratory and is an active member of the Exercise Metabolism Research Group in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster.  Her research interests are in exercise physiology with specialization in the application of ultrasound techniques to the assessment of the peripheral blood vessels.  Most recently, together with her research team, she has been examining impact of high intensity interval training on the blood vessels and heart in individuals with coronary artery disease and the use of heat therapy as an alternative to exercise training and focussing on inclusion of women in these areas of research.  She has directly supervised over 200 undergraduate and graduate students since her appointment in 2000 and was awarded the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology Mentorship award in October 2018. Dr. MacDonald has been continually funded by The Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada since 2001, and currently is also funded by Canadian Institutes for Health Research. 

Dr. MacDonald is a member of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, the American College of Sports Medicine, the American Physiological Society, and the European College of Sports Science and.  Two research leaves at Stanford University (July 2006-June 2007) and Loughborough University (July 2013-June 2014) provided Dr. MacDonald with international academic exposure and fostered lasting international research collaborations.  She retains a Visiting Professor position in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences at Loughborough University and is currently on research leave and appointed as a Global Chair at Manchester Metropolitan University in the Institute of Sport. 

Heather Colwell is an Executive Advisor of Development in McMaster’s University Advancement department. As part of the University’s highly professional and award-winning fundraising team, she has implemented effective advancement strategies, designed transformative development structures and established innovative partnerships and collaborations. Heather oversees development strategies in McMaster’s faculties of heath sciences and science, as well as the nuclear portfolio and the estate giving and legacy planning team. Throughout her time at McMaster, Heather has been instrumental in driving revenue growth across the University.

Heather has been with McMaster since 2016 in multiple development leadership positions within the Faculty of Science as well as Gift Planning. Prior to that, Heather held development roles at a number of independent schools in Ontario and Quebec, Canada.

Heather received her B.A. in Biomedical Sciences from SUNY at Buffalo and holds a Master of Philanthropy and Non-Profit Leadership from Carleton University. Heather is a Certified Fund Raising Executive.

Janna Schwartz is the Assistant Dean for Development and Alumni Relations at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts overseeing fundraising and alumni activity. She previously served as Director of Development for the BU Tanglewood Institute, where she quadrupled the individual giving stream since 2014. Prior to coming to BU, Janna served as the executive director of the Free for All Concert Fund, established to provide free high quality, classical music to Boston’s residents and visitors in perpetuity. Additionally, Janna served as senior program officer at Hunt Alternatives Fund, overseeing ARTWorks for Kids, where she led the effort to build a coalition of 30 youth arts organizations across disciplines. Janna began her career holding several positions at the Massachusetts Cultural Council – the state’s public arts agency.

Janna holds a BA in art history from Brown University and an MBA from the Simmons School of Management in Boston, MA, where she earned the William J. Homes Award for academic achievement in the behavioral curriculum. She resides in Swampscott, MA with her husband, two dancing daughters, and a pup. Janna is active on her temple board, where she previously served as Vice President for Development. Once upon a time, she held Actors’ Equity points for her teenage roles in professional theater and played the clarinet.

Harvey Young is a cultural historian and arts advocate. An expert on the performing and visual arts, he has advised on arts & culture policy both regionally and nationally. He has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, NPR, CBC Radio as well as within the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune among other major news outlets.

He is the author or editor of ten books including Embodying Black Experience and the Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, winners of multiple book awards for outstanding scholarship. His most recent book, Theater & Human Flourishing was published in 2023 by Oxford University Press. 

In January 2018, he became Dean of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Boston University. As Dean, he provides primary leadership for the School of Music, School of Theatre, School of Visual Arts, BU Tanglewood Institute, Wheelock Family Theatre, BU Art Galleries, and BU Opera Institute. In addition, he chairs BU’s Arts Leaders Circle, which provides guidance on major University initiatives and civic partnerships concerning the arts. He is Professor of English (with tenure), Professor of Theatre Arts, and a faculty affiliate in the Department of African American and Black Diaspora Studies.

Dean Young has led a resurgence of the arts at Boston University. Achievements include the opening of the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre, the successful close of BU’s first-ever capital campaign (with CFA exceeding goal by 40%), extensive renovation of CFA facilities (with more than $110M invested), comprehensive redesign of curricular offerings and the launch of signature new degrees, the expansion of international programs, and the recruitment of award-winning, world-class faculty, and the creation of CFA’s current strategic plan (Beacon 2030). 

Beyond the arts, Dean Young has played an outsized role in leading strategic initiatives at Boston University. He currently serves on the Presidential Search committee; served as a co-architect of the University’s Strategic Plan (BU 20/30); chaired the searches for the Associate Provost for Community & Inclusion and Dean of Wheelock College (Education); and served on a university-level taskforce to assess the future of PhD education. 

Between 2002 and 2017, Dr. Young was a member of the faculty at Northwestern University, where he was Professor and Chair of Theatre as well as Professor of African American Studies and Professor of Radio/Television/Film. During his tenure as Chair, Northwestern Theatre rose to #2 in the nation (The Hollywood Reporter).

A past president of both the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Black Theatre Association, Dean Young has served on the boards of numerous arts and educational organizations, including the African American Arts Alliance of Chicago, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), American Society for Theatre Research and Yale Club of Chicago. He currently serves on the boards of Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and Company One Theatre. He has served as an evaluator for numerous arts & culture foundations, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A former Harvard and Stanford faculty fellow, Dean Young graduated with honors from Yale and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell. In 2021, he was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.