Martin W. Shell is vice president and chief external relations officer at Stanford University. Reporting directly to its president, he leads Stanford's offices of Public Affairs, University Communications, Special Events and Protocol, Office of Development and the newly formed Office for Community Engagement. In this position, he aligns the work of Stanford's externally facing teams to design, implement and maintain strategies for service and engagement regionally, nationally and globally, including collaboration with local partners to address sustainability, affordability and other challenges specific to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

Prior to this position, Shell served as vice president for development at Stanford for 13 years, setting the development agenda, establishing goals and overseeing the fundraising operations across the university. Before becoming vice president in April 2005, he served for two years as associate vice president for development. While associate vice president, he had oversight responsibility for major portions of the university development program, including a number of the school and unit development offices.

He also served as the executive vice chair and lead staff member to "The Stanford Challenge," the university's $4.3 billion fundraising effort launched in October 2006. "The Stanford Challenge" ended in December 2011, securing $6.2 billion in gifts and pledges from nearly 167,000 households—at the time it represented the largest overall dollar amount ever raised in a five-year public campaign period by an institution of higher education. During his 13-plus years as vice president for development, Stanford University has raised more than $12.5 billion in cash or cash equivalents according to figures compiled by the Council for Aid to Education.

Shell joined Stanford in 1998 to become senior associate dean for external relations and later was appointed chief operating officer at Stanford Law School. Prior to his move to Stanford, he was associate dean for development and alumni relations at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

For 10 years, he was a member of the Development Committee of the American Bar Association's Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar and served as the committee co-chair from 2001-2003. In 2003 he co-chaired the Section's Jackson Hole Conference for Law School Deans and Development Officers. He currently serves as a trustee of Hendrix College, and is a former CASE Trustee. He has served as a trustee of the Castilleja School in Palo Alto and the Oakland-based NGO, Coaching Corps. He also holds the CASE Crystal Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Shell has been an advancement officer for more than 30 years serving institutions of higher education in Arkansas, Pennsylvania and California. In addition to this work, he also was an executive with a public utility company, a press secretary to a U.S. representative and a newspaper reporter.

Lishelle Blakemore is the associate vice chancellor at UC Berkeley and vice president of the UC Berkeley Foundation, where she has worked since 1994 in various leadership capacities. She oversees university alumni relations, annual programs, external relations, foundation relations, gift planning, international relations, major gifts, marketing and communications, and student experience and diversity programs. Considered a “builder” of new programs, she designed and established the university’s first comprehensive annual and individual giving department. She has been a part of the campaign management team for the $1.44B "Campaign for the New Century," the $3.13B "Campaign for Berkeley" and the Light the Way Campaign launching in 2020.

Prior to joining Cal, Blakemore served as assistant vice president for The Pacific Group where she provided consulting and fundraising services for universities throughout the country, including UC Davis, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, California State University Fullerton, Texas A&M University, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University.

In November 2020, William Christopher "Chris" Clarke was named associate vice president for Duke Campaigns where he is responsible for planning the institution’s next comprehensive fundraising campaign as well as designing a complimentary initiative aimed at quantifying volunteer engagement across the institution. Prior to his current role  he served as Duke’s senior assistant vice president for Trinity College and The Graduate School. Clarke assumed this role in 2016 and in that capacity led a program that represents 80 percent of Duke’s alumni and generates $75-80M per year in private support for the institution. In 2012, as the associate dean of development for the Pratt School, Clarke planned and led engineering’s Duke Forward Campaign which surpassed its goal of $161.5M by nearly $40M one-year prior to the close of Duke Forward.

Before coming to Duke in 2004, Clarke was the director of development and leadership gifts for Purdue University's School of Mechanical Engineering (its flagship program) where he led their $125M campaign. Prior to his role in mechanical engineering, Clarke served Purdue as its associate director of planned giving from 1997 to 2001, when he became the associate director of development for major gifts. In addition to his major gift responsibilities, he also served as the development liaison for Purdue's Black Cultural Center and as the Director of Alumni Outreach Programs for the Purdue Alumni Association. 

An active member of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) which is the professional organization for alumni engagement, communications and development, Clarke has served as the conference chair for both District V (Midwest States) in 2001, and District III (Southeastern States) in 2013. He chaired District III’s Cabinet from 2019-21 and was named in 2022 to CASE’s U.S./Canada Council. From 2016 – 2022 Clarke served on the faculty of CASE’s premier Summer Institute in Educational Fundraising, and in 2009 he was awarded CASE's Crystal Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Clarke holds a master's degree in higher education administration and bachelor’s degrees in psychology as well as sociology and criminology from Purdue University. 

Peter joined Marts&Lundy in 2022, bringing experience in advancement leadership, organizational culture, and talent management, as well as planning for and executing university campaigns.

As Vice Chancellor for Advancement at University of California, Riverside from 2009 through 2021, Peter led development, alumni engagement, and communications & marketing at a Carnegie Research 1 institution enrolling 26,000 students in Southern California. In this role, Peter led UCR's first comprehensive fundraising campaign, surpassing its $300 million goal; oversaw an institutional rebranding and visual identity initiative; launched an alumni census and facilitated a transition away from dues-based alumni membership; and served in a campus leadership role during The Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. UCR is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU).

Previously, Peter spent 19 years at UCLA and was on the advancement executive team that ran and closed UCLA's second comprehensive fundraising effort. Campaign UCLA generated $3.053 billion for faculty research, student success, programs, and facilities and transformed the University's culture of philanthropy. Peter is an active CASE volunteer, former trustee, and frequent speaker and conference chair. He served for a decade on the faculty of the CASE Summer Institute in Educational Fundraising and was recognized with the Crystal Apple for Teaching Excellence.

Peter has contributed chapters to published books on campaign management; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and advancement leadership. Peter spent 10 years on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the world's largest healthcare, social service, and arts & culture organization serving LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. He earned a BA in communication studies from UCLA and an MBA from California State University, Northridge. Peter resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Kevin Heaney was appointed Princeton University's first vice president for advancement in November 2016. In this role, he serves as a member of the President's Cabinet and oversees the university's Office of Development and the Office of Alumni Affairs. He previously served as acting vice president for development since March of 2016, and came to Princeton in March 2015 as deputy vice president for development.

Before joining Princeton, he served for nearly a decade at the Oregon State University Foundation as the vice president for constituent and central development programs and deputy campaign director. He played a key role in OSU's first comprehensive fundraising campaign, which surpassed its $1 billion goal 11 months ahead of schedule. Before OSU, Heaney served in a variety of development positions at Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and Harvard University. During his career, he has been part of four highly successful campaigns and has been an active member of the broader development community, chairing seven national conferences on campaign fundamentals and strategies for CASE.

A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, Heaney has a master's degree from Columbia University and a law degree from Boston College.

Patricia (Trish) Jackson has close to 40 years of advancement experience at a wide variety of educational institutions and academic health centers. In June 2022 she will begin her tenure as the Chief Advancement Officer for Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. She has also held senior leadership roles at The New School, Brown University and Smith, Wheaton and Mount Holyoke colleges. From 2015-18, she served as Interim Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations at the Medical Advancement Office for the Geisel School of Medicine and Dartmouth Health. She also served Dartmouth College as associate vice president for development and chief of staff for the advancement division.

Trish is an alumna of Scripps College, the women’s college in Claremont, CA, where she serves on the board. She has also served as a campaign consultant for Women Moving Millions, is on the board of Every Woman Treaty, and was on the council for the Women’s Philanthropic Institute at the Lilly School of Philanthropy in Indiana for over a decade. She and her academic neuroscientist husband, Will Millard, make their home in Norwich, Vermont

In August, 2021, Lacie LaRue was named as the assistant vice president of advancement strategies for University of Oregon Advancement. In this leadership role, she acts as a top strategist and creative leader for the UO Advancement program; overseeing several programs, playing a key role in campaign planning and spearheading UO Advancement’s Digital Transformation initiative. Her goal is to continually find sophisticated ways to utilize data and systems to improve the giving experience, identify the next generation of philanthropic leaders and optimize the work of Advancement.  

She has spent the last 20 years working in the world of higher education fundraising, with positions at the Oregon State University Foundation, University of Maryland, Portland State University and Iowa State University. She has also chaired several national CASE conferences, including the Senior Annual Giving, Multichannel Annual Giving, and Leadership Annual Giving Conferences, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy recognized her contributions to nonprofit leadership in their “40 Under 40” list in 2016.

LaRue holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Iowa State University, a master’s degree in organization leadership from Colorado State University and a certification in Digital Transformation Strategies from Cambridge Judge Business School.

Heidi Hansen McCrory is vice president for development at Furman University and is responsible for annual and endowment support, major gifts and capital campaigns, alumni and parent relations, and donor relations and stewardship. She joined Furman in 2018 after serving four years as vice president for college relations at Kenyon College in Ohio. She has held previous advancement leadership positions at Sweet Briar College, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and New England College.

McCrory is a committed volunteer for a number of organizations including the Girl Scouts of the USA where she has served as a council board chair, board member, national delegate, cookie mom, fundraiser and speaker. In 2007, she received the Athena Award from the Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce which recognizes professional women who demonstrate excellence, creativity and initiative in their business profession, who improve the quality of life for others in the community and who actively assist women in realizing their full leadership potential.

She earned a bachelor's degree in communication from Southern Methodist University and a master's degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.