Rebecca Weitz is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in gift services and data management. She currently serves as the Senior Managing Director of Gift Services at the Wisconsin Foundation & Alumni Association (WFAA). Rebecca leads a team of ten amazing humans who annually process over 140,000 gifts and pledges. WFAA’s Gift Services team is committed to timely and accurate gift processing, collaborative stakeholder support, and continuous innovation.

Before joining WFAA, Rebecca dedicated sixteen years to the University of Colorado Foundation. There, she excelled in managing gifts and records services, reporting, prospect and proposal management, and data analysis. Her efforts were instrumental in developing and implementing significant process improvements for both the CU Foundation and the Office of Advancement at CU.

Rebecca has participated in two major CRM conversions: from Ellucian Advance to UCI’s Ascend and from Blackbaud CRM to Affinaquest. She also has extensive experience with smaller-scale CRMs, including Trailblazer and Neon CRM. Rebecca is dedicated to enhancing operational intelligence and efficiency. She strives to streamline processes and elevate the standards of gift and data services, positioning them as a cornerstone of inspirational and influential advancement practices.

Rebecca is also a recognized speaker and presenter, having contributed to multiple Ellucian conferences, CASE conferences, and the aasp Summit. She has served as Chair and faculty of the CASE Gift & Records Workshop multiple times. Rebecca holds a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College and a certificate in professional management from Employers Council.

With almost 20 years of experience in public higher education, Robyn possesses a deep understanding of the issues and challenges unique to the filed. The past 19 years she has focused her career in Advancement, making her well-versed in the business needs of university stakeholders and the data, systems, and processes that are critical to a successful fundraising enterprise. Using a “Start-up” approach to solving business, organizational, and technical issues, Robyn is adept at developing strong, cross-functional teams, strategies, and services. Past successes include database conversions, business process improvements, and training programs that encompass the entirety of the Advancement organization.

Robyn has served as conference speaker and presenter at multiple CASE conferences and AASP Summit. She holds a bachelor's degree from California State University, Chico and a certificate in digital transformation from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Karen A. Sims-Harrell currently serves as director gifts and records management at NC State University. Sims-Harrell brings over 20 years of experience within gift processing and donor records management. She is an experienced advancement professional with proven skills in fundraising and financial management, gift administration, policy creation, leadership and staff development. She is skilled in the use of consultative approaches to increase efficiency in integration of industry best practices for gift acceptance and data standards.

Sims-Harrell has served as a board member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals-Eastern PA Chapter for seven years and served as the Ethics and Accountability chair for two years. She has also served as a conference presenter and volunteer with CASE in varying capacities during her membership over the last 15 years. Sims has received the distinction as being a CASE district faculty stellar speaker for multiple years and was awarded the CASE 2021 District III Opportunity and Inclusion Award for her work in promoting diversity and inclusion industry best practices.

She holds a bachelor's degree from DeSales University in management and marketing and a master's degree in educational leadership from Lehigh University.

Benjamin R. Fiore-Walker, Ph.D. (He/Him) is originally from Southampton, PA in suburban Philadelphia. Ben received a Ph.D. in neuroscience (psychobiology) from the University of Virginia, and has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA. His research area of focus was in the development of brain circuitry as they relate to epilepsy and autism.

Ben comes to his position as the senior director for the Opportunity and Inclusion Center (OIC) after close to 25 years working in the diversity space. Before coming to CASE, Ben was the manager of the Office of Diversity Programs at the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, DC, where he had a broad mandate to develop strategies to build out relationships and initiatives from across the society in order to help ACS live into its core value of diversity, equity, inclusion and respect.   Before ACS, he served as a senior managing director for diversity and inclusion at Teach for America (TFA), where he was responsible for devising and quantifying diversity metrics for TFA for the development of initiatives to diversity staff and corps member populations. Prior to TFA, he spent 19 years at the Georgetown University School of Medicine where he was the Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion. This work has taken Ben into many elementary and middle schools in underserved areas of the D.C. metro region, where he uses neuroscience to get kids excited about STEM fields and higher education.

Ben has written on and studied diversity climate in higher education and the workplace and is a firm believer that diversity & inclusion matters.  Ben believes that even though heterogeneity is the key ingredient to success—with diverse teams being more productive and creative than non-diverse teams, it’s all for not if the members of those diverse teams don’t feel their differences are celebrated or valued.  We need both, diversity and inclusion to reach our full potential.

Deborah Trumble is the Senior Director of Research at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, CASE and oversees CASE Insights global research, benchmarks, and survey operations. Prior to joining CASE in 2022, Deborah spent 15 years as an analytics consultant for Blackbaud Target Analytics working with a wide range of national and international nonprofits, including higher education institutions. She facilitated peer-to-peer collaborative donorCentrics™ benchmarking meetings, provided fundraising trends and insights to guide strategic decisions, and drove content development of online analytic dashboards. Prior to her time at Blackbaud, Deborah served for eight years as administrative officer and operations manager for the Smithsonian Institution, Friends of the Smithsonian membership program, overseeing administrative functions, membership operations, and analysis of membership performance. Deborah has a B.A. in Art History from Florida State University and an M.B.A. from the University of Florida.