Faculty
Meet Your Chair
Carrie White
Carrie White is the vice president of technology, information & philanthropic strategy at the University of Cincinnati Foundation, where she leads teams responsible for data management, gift processing, reporting and analytic services, prospect development, application support, IT infrastructure, and desktop and hardware support. During her tenure with the UC Foundation, she has led the transformation of the team from the 'back office' to a robust & sophisticated strategic partner.
As a departmental leader, White is dynamic and detail-oriented. She combines comprehensive experiences in advancement services, fundraising, strategic planning, analytics and data management to focus and guide her team. Her professional passion is tying together the pieces of a fundraising shop and leveraging data to make things run smoothly. She credits her start in her profession with a colleague who encouraged her to "figure it out" on a homegrown Paradox database. As an advancement services professional, she deeply values the "can-do spirit" of initiative and discernment in her everyday work--she challenges her staff to "think and try" and believes her success is rooted in those qualities.
A graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, White previously worked with the UC Health Foundation, the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati, Jacobson Consulting Applications, the Cincinnati Museum Center, and the Birmingham Zoo.
Faculty
Katie Harrell
Katie Harrell, Senior Director of Strategic Planning and Organizational Development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is an MBA-educated advancement professional with a proven track record of implementing organizational change in complex, matrixed organizations. A strategic leader in philanthropy in higher education, Katie believes strong systems drive excellence in performance, which is summed up well by James Clear, ‘You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the levels of your systems’. Katie couples her background in analytics and business operations with experience across advancement functions to translate data to strategy and back again, filling the gap between technical and strategic advancement operations.
Passionate about adult learning and building world class higher education advancement operations, in addition to serving as CASE Faculty at the Summer Institute in Advancement Services, Katie has presented for the Annual Giving Network (AGN) & CASE (District V, All District and DRIVE/), at the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement (APRA) Data Science Now! & the Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP) conferences, and at the Great Lakes Prospect Development Forum. Additionally, multiple projects lead by Katie have been featured as advancement best practices by EAB, a higher education think tank that works with 2,500+ schools, colleges, and universities to drive change through data-driven insights and best-in-class capabilities.
Katie earned an MBA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Bachelor of Music at the University of Louisville.
Shalonda Martin
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.
Sarah Lawlor
Sarah Lawlor currently serves as the Director of Development for Operations and Programs for the College of Engineering Foundation at NC State. Sarah brings over 16 years of experience within the Advancement Services realm. She is an experienced advancement professional with proven skills in database systems, reporting functions, regulatory compliance across federal, state, and local guidelines, gift and data entry, prospect research and the ability to create deliverables from the data.
Her key interests include strategic leadership and team building, developing communications and presenting to key stakeholders, metric based goals and objectives, regulatory compliance, policy and procedure creation and implementation.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Westfield State University in psychology with a minor in fine arts.
Jami Hougen Johnson
Jami is a member of the Prospect Development and Decision Support team at the University of Chicago, where she leads the Prospect Management and Information Engagement teams. These teams work to increase the organization’s capacity for fundraising through writing strategic policy and analyses, creating user-centered data tools, managing organizational knowledge, and developing mission-focused training. Currently, she is focused on preparing colleagues as UChicago overhauls their technology systems and moves to Salesforce. With over ten years of experience in advancement services, Jami strongly believes in the importance of positioning the work as a key driver of fundraising results. She got her start working as a fundraiser but soon realized she could raise more money through improving systems holistically, rather than soliciting donors individually. To this day, she often tells colleagues that “she is a fundraiser too, she just raises more money using a spreadsheet”.
Jami has a B.S. in Psychology and certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Iowa and a master’s in liberal arts, Ethics and Leadership, from the University of Chicago.