A woman wearing an orange headscarf and black blazer with yellow details writing on a glass board in a modern office.

Development strategy for institutional advancement across the enterprise.

Across ASU Foundation and related initiatives, I developed and executed targeted strategies for high-net-worth donor engagement, digital platform adoption, public-facing institutional storytelling, and affinity-based fundraising, shaping both individual campaign assets and broader engagement systems used across advancement channels.

This body of work translates university advancement priorities into structured engagement frameworks across donor, alumni, and public audiences, integrating campaign strategy, narrative design, and platform-level communications to improve participation, conversion, and long-term ecosystem alignment.

Innovative advancement

As donor expectations evolve, advancement organizations are increasingly exploring structures that extend beyond conventional fundraising models. This work focused on the development and positioning of new philanthropic mechanisms designed to align institutional priorities with emerging forms of capital deployment and donor participation.

Venture philanthropy

A philanthropic investment vehicle developed to combine charitable giving with strategic venture investment. Created through collaboration with foundation leadership, investment professionals, and university innovation stakeholders, the Venture Philanthropy Fund established a framework through which tax-deductible gifts could be pooled into a restricted fund and deployed into mission-aligned startups.

  • Arizona State University Venture Philanthropy Fund promotional graphic with abstract circles and stripes design and tagline 'A new way to make a difference'
  • Young man with short black hair and a green jacket sitting at a white table with a laptop covered in stickers, looking to his right, in a modern building with glass walls and ceiling lights.
  • A woman giving a presentation in front of a large screen displaying financial data with a blue background. She is gesturing with her hands, wearing a gray jacket over a patterned dress.
  • Flowchart illustrating the investment process, including steps: gifts are pooled together, opportunities are sourced, aligned and vetted, and investments are made in transformative companies.
  • Hands working with electronic components and breadboard on a table.
  • A woman standing in front of a colorful digital art installation that resembles a large, abstract, neon-lit face with vibrant colors like pink, purple, yellow, and blue. The woman appears to be interacting with the display, which is on a dark background. The floor has a keyboard pattern, with keys labeled with letters.
  • Slide from a presentation titled 'Campaign alignment' with highlighted keywords 'Transform global education,' 'Reshape our relationship with the planet,' and 'Build the future of health,' describing strategies to prepare people for sustainable industries, health education, and system navigation.
  • A person giving a presentation next to a yellow slide with the title 'Impactful returns' and explanatory text about reinvesting funds for long-term impact, with yellow abstract shapes in the bottom right corner.
  • A group of diverse students sitting and smiling during a presentation at a university, with a sidebar highlighting 'Transformative leadership' at ASU.
  • Logos of companies labeled as recently established mission-aligned companies, including CogBooks, Dreamscape Learn, Forage, Gradarius, InScribe, Rippen, and others.
  • Diagram showing ASU's venture ecosystem with four components: RealmSpark with funding validation and operational support, InvestU with angel investment aligned with ASU's mission, ScaleU as a live university setting to test and refine, and Skysong Innovations, ASU's IP and tech transfer hub.
  • Two men working at a computer station in a dark room illuminated by vertical neon blue lights, with a yellow text overlay that says 'High risk. High reward.' and a paragraph about embracing bold ideas and measuring success by lives changed.
  • Group of people at an event, some looking at screens or tablets, with colorful hanging lights overhead, in a dark setting.
  • A thank you message on a yellow banner with abstract black and white striped circles and lines in the background.

The model was designed to create a self-reinforcing source of philanthropic capital, allowing investment returns to be reinvested into future ventures or directed toward broader university priorities. From the earliest stages of development, I worked alongside foundation and investment leadership to help shape the fund’s strategic direction, refining its positioning, investment thesis, and donor proposition to better align with emerging philanthropic behaviors influenced by venture capital and startup ecosystems.

  • Young man with short black hair working on a laptop decorated with various stickers, sitting at a table in a modern building with glass walls and ceiling lights.
  • Detailed infographic explaining how venture philanthropy uses technology and investment to address societal challenges with prominent sections titled 'How it works' and 'Our ambition is to deliver tangible, scalable interventions that reshape our society.' Highlights include phrases like 'philanthropy with velocity' and concepts about investing in high-impact technology companies.
  • A brochure page with text and a photo of a young man wearing glasses, a black cap, and a black vest with a red patch, working on a project in a laboratory or classroom. The page discusses new university funding and investment outcomes.
  • A person stands on an interactive floor with large white keys resembling a keyboard, looking at a vibrant, digital art installation with colorful abstract shapes and lines projected on a curved wall.
  • A brochure layout with text about venture philanthropy, featuring circular images including people smiling and a person working with electronic equipment, decorated with yellow and gray striped design elements.

Adaptive engagement systems

Digital engagement initiatives often encounter diminishing returns once early adopters have been reached. These projects examined the challenge of sustaining participation among high-capacity donor audiences whose engagement preferences frequently diverge from broader digital adoption patterns.

Platform launch and promotion

ASU Link was developed as a digital portal through which endowment donors could access fund information, tax documentation, reporting materials, and other account services. I supported the platform launch through technical content development, user-facing communications, onboarding materials, and marketing strategy.

While initial adoption was strong, growth eventually plateaued as the program encountered a structural challenge common among older, high-capacity donor populations: limited interest in creating and maintaining additional digital accounts.

An indirect approach

To address this challenge, engagement strategy shifted away from direct platform promotion and toward audience-interest alignment. Working with the Chief Investment Officer, I developed a recurring market and investment newsletter designed around subjects of demonstrated interest to endowment donors rather than the platform itself.

ASU Link appeared only as a secondary call-to-action within content primarily focused on economic trends, portfolio management, and financial markets.

The series consistently generated average open rates around 60 percent, with individual editions reaching as high as 70 percent, consistently exceeding internal benchmarks and nonprofit industry averages by a wide margin. It quickly became the primary driver of new ASU Link registrations.

Public advocacy infrastructure

Universities operate within complex civic, political, and community environments that require ongoing engagement beyond traditional donor audiences. These projects focused on public-facing communications designed to strengthen institutional understanding, demonstrate public value, and mobilize stakeholder participation.

Platform launch and promotion

This advocacy journey was developed to transform passive donor affinity into active public engagement on behalf of Arizona State University. Beginning with audience research and preference gathering, the campaign progressed through targeted calls to action tied to state budget negotiations and culminated in a stewardship message following a successful advocacy outcome. By structuring the experience as a sustained engagement sequence rather than a single mobilization effort, the project helped build an identifiable advocacy constituency while providing supporters with clear opportunities to influence issues affecting the university.

Affinity-based engagement

Constituency-focused fundraising requires communications strategies that recognize the role of identity, shared experience, and community affiliation in philanthropic behavior. These projects explored approaches to engagement centered on specific donor communities and institutional milestones.

Black Philanthropy Month

Developed in support of Black Philanthropy Month, this campaign was designed to recognize and elevate longstanding contributions that had often gone unseen within the university’s broader philanthropic narrative. By highlighting the impact of Black alumni, donors, students, and community leaders, the project connected individual stories of generosity and achievement to a larger tradition of community investment, educational access, and institutional advancement.

Raising the profile

This profile video highlighted a student-led philanthropic initiative founded in response to the social unrest of 2020, using personal storytelling to explore how civic engagement, charitable giving, and community leadership emerge at the grassroots level. Centered on the founder’s experience, the piece demonstrated how philanthropy can serve as a tool for collective action and local impact, particularly among younger generations.

Expanding the narrative

A long-form feature published through ASU News to support the university’s first observance of Black Philanthropy Month. Through interviews with donors, alumni, staff, faculty, and community leaders, the story examined philanthropy as a broad tradition of service, mentorship, advocacy, and community investment, highlighting forms of generosity that have historically shaped Black communities but often remain outside conventional philanthropic narratives.

Read the story
A young man in graduation gown and stole posing with family or friends, celebrating outdoors during a graduation ceremony.

50 Years of Title IX

Created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Title IX, this digital storytelling experience connected the history of women’s athletics at ASU to contemporary philanthropic priorities. Through archival content, athlete stories, and donor-focused messaging, the project positioned support for women’s sports as both a celebration of past progress and an investment in future opportunity.

Celebrating excellence

This landing page serves as a commemorative digital storytelling experience marking the 50th anniversary of Title IX, connecting the legislative origins of the policy to its long-term impact on women’s athletics at Arizona State University. Structured around historical context, institutional data, and athlete profiles, the page frames Title IX as an ongoing system-level transformation in access, participation, and performance, while directing attention toward philanthropic support for continued advancement of women’s sports through ASU’s Wings of Gold initiative.

Progress in perspective

Through a combination of historical context, statistical framing, and contemporary ASU program highlights, the video underscores both the significant expansion of opportunities for women in sports since 1972 and the persistent structural inequities that remain, while positioning philanthropic support through Wings of Gold as a mechanism for advancing continued progress.

Immediately following the video’s presentation at the Wings of Gold banquet, attendees contributed more than $200,000—roughly four times the event’s typical fundraising total.

The landing page later won a Gold Award at the 2022 NYX Awards.