James W Cheng, PhD is currently the Executive Director for Business Intelligence & Prospect Strategies at Boston University’s Development & Alumni Relations (DAR), collaborating with Business Intelligence, Prospect Research, Prospect Management, and other DAR teams to find the most capable and willing constituents to give their testimony, ties, talent, time, and tithe to BU. Prior to working in the philanthropy sector, James had made intellectual and professional forays into cell and developmental biology, high school teaching, academic research in education, as well as healthcare market research. While finishing up his doctoral degree, his interest in philanthropy was piqued when he took on the role of Prospect Data Mining and Modeling Specialist at MIT. After spending time in the corporate world as a healthcare market researcher, James left “the dark side” and returned to the light of computational philanthropy, working at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & The Jimmy Fund’s Division of Philanthropy as Associate Director and Senior Associate Director for Prospect Identification & Analytics and at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as Development Data Analytics Specialist and Senior Data Scientist.

James earned both his PhD in Educational Research, Measurement & Evaluation and his MEd in Secondary Education in the Biological Sciences at Boston College. He received his BA in Biology and in Sociology from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.