International Fundraising

Faculty

Conference Co-Chairs

Catheryn C. Obern
Major Gifts Officer, Alumni Affairs and Development
Cornell University

Catheryn Obern is a major gifts officer in the Division of Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell University. She works with Cornell alumni, parents and friends who live in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. In close collaboration with trustees and other Cornell leaders, she works to strengthen and further develop individual philanthropic engagement with the university, with a particular focus on university priorities. Twenty-three years ago, she established the Office of International Affairs at Cornell through which she built the initial alumni affairs and development program focused on those alumni and friends living outside of the United States.

Obern received both her master's degree and her doctorate from Cornell University in the area of development sociology, with minors in development economics and agricultural economics. She graduated cum laude with a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

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Tom Smith Tseng
Director, International Division, Office of Development
Stanford University

Tom Smith Tseng boomeranged back to Stanford University in May 2010 to lead its major gifts operation outside of the United States.

He was senior director for the Western & Asia-Pacific regions in Alumni Relations and Development (ARD), the University of Chicago's satellite office in Palo Alto, Calif. He relocated, rebuilt and oversaw this alumni-outreach and fundraising outpost from 2006 to 2010. Prior to joining the U of Chicago, he held progressively more responsible positions, first in admissions then in development, at Cornell, Harvard and Stanford Universities.

Born and raised in Taiwan, Tseng's parents moved the family to Hawaii when he was a teenager. After graduating from Cornell, he worked briefly as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C. He migrated from admissions to advancement in 1994 when he became associate director in the international regional office during Cornell's $1.25 billion campaign. Since then, he has specialized in raising large gifts from an overseas constituency.

Tseng believes in and supports CASE's mission. He attended or served on the faculty of various conferences and in 2006 he received the faculty star status for his presentation on international fundraising at the Summit for Advancement Leaders in New York City.

He is an active Cornell volunteer and has held leadership positions in alumni clubs, admissions, and fundraising committees and class council. He is an elected member of the Cornell University Council. Besides service to his alma mater, he was a director of Volunteers In Asia (VIA), a private, nonprofit, non-religious organization dedicated to increasing understanding between the United States and Asia through service and education.

Tseng studied engineering in college and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Cornell University.

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Faculty

Eric McCready
Regional Director, International Development and Scholarship Initiative
University of Oregon

Eric's McCready's career experience for the past 40 years has included teaching, administration in large universities and art museums, and strategic planning in advancement with emphasis on major gifts in both the United States and internationally. From the University of Victoria, British Columbia to Bowling Green State University (Ohio), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Oregon, his work history includes teaching, arts management, assistant to a university provost, executive assistant to a university president, and fundraising.

Internationally, his work has taken him to Asia, Europe, South and Central America, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. For the past 10 years, fundraising in Asia has been his focus for the University of Oregon.

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Ted Probert, Jr.
Director of Alumni/ae Affairs and Development
Phillips Exeter Academy

Ted Probert was recently appointed as the director of alumni/ae affairs and development at Phillips Exeter Academy on March 1, 2011. Prior to this assignment, he served as the director of international advancement and parent programs for two years and as the Academy's campaign director during the "Exeter Initiatives," a comprehensive campaign that secured $352M from 2001-2009. Probert is completing his ninth year at the Academy. Prior to joining Exeter, he worked for the Lawrenceville School and Kent School.

Probert is completing his eighteenth year in the Marine Corps Reserves, in which he currently holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He left the Academy community and deployed to Iraq in 2004 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom where he commanded an Engineer Company of 150 Marines in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq.

Probert earned his bachelor's degree in history and certification in secondary school education at Duke University, where he was also commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1984.

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Speakers

Erica Guyer
Associate
Withers Bergman

Erica Guyer is an associate at Withers Bergman, where she focuses on tax and estate planning. She has a particular emphasis on counseling individuals with respect to planned giving and advising charitable organizations on tax and governance matters, including their international fundraising efforts.

 She is a member of the New York Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the American Bar Association and serves on the Non-Profit Organizations Committee of the New York City Bar.

She received a bachelor's degree with honors from Brown University, a master's degree in anthropology from Arizona State University, and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Chicago law School, where she was a Fulbright Scholar.

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Deidre O'Byrne
Partner
Withers Bergman

As partner at Withers Bergman, Deidre O'Byrne represents families in a broad range of estate planning and tax matters, including charitable giving. She advises fiduciaries on trust and estate administration and probate. Her practice also involves advising charitable organizations on tax matters and corporate governance. Deidre leads the firm's US Family and Business Planning Group as well as its US Charities Group.

She has spoken at several conferences and webinars and was a contributing author to Inside the Minds: Strategies for Trusts and Estates in New York (2011) and Late Payment of Legacies: After Seven Months Things Can Get Interesting (NYSBA Trusts and Estates Law Section Newsletter, Winter 2010.)

O'Byrne is a trustee at the Museum of the City of New York. She serves on the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Trust and Estate Advisory Committee, the New York Public Library Planned Giving Advisory Board, and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Committee on Trusts, Estates.

She earned her bachelor's degree, cum laude, from Princeton University, her master's degree from Yale University, and a Juris Doctorate from Columbia University.

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Martin Tang
Presidential Councillor and Trustee Emeritus
Cornell University

Martin Tang is a presidential councillor and trustee emeritus of Cornell University. He is a member of the MIT Corporation and was the 112th president of the MIT Alumni Association in 2006-7. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a master's degree from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2008, Tang retired as chairman, Asia of executive search consultants Spencer Stuart & Associates, after over 16 years with the firm. Prior to Spencer Stuart, he ran another international executive search firm in Hong Kong. His recruiting expertise was broadly-based and spanned senior-level and chief executive assignments in the public and private sectors, banking and commerce. Early in his career, he was with the Bank of America in San Francisco and Taiwan.

Tang was appointed by the Hong Kong Government to a number of positions: Professional Services Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (2005-9) and the University Grants Committee (2002-8). For six years he was a council member of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and was subsequently a member of the University Court. He is a director of two publicly-listed companies: Li & Fung Ltd, Hong Kong and CEI Contract Manufacturing Pte Ltd, Singapore. Among his many civic involvements, Tang served on the Asia Society's Hong Kong Center's Advisory Council, and is a trustee of the World Wide Fund for Nature - Hong Kong. He is on the Board of Governors of Junior Achievement Hong Kong.

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Oscar L. Tang
President, Board of Trustees
Phillips Academy

Oscar L. Tang is an active philanthropist and is committed to the support of education and Chinese art and culture. He serves as president of the Board of Trustees of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and serves as a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the China Institute in America and The Dunhuang Foundation.

Tang is a member of the Board of Directors of the Vail Valley Foundation, and is a founding member and governor of the Committee of 100. He is a fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Tang is a private investor.

He is retired from Reich & Tang, an asset management firm which he co-founded and served as president and CEO for over 20 years. In 1987, Reich & Tang L.P. became the first publicly traded investment management limited partnership when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1993, New England Investment Companies merged into Reich & Tang to form Nvest, L.P. Nvest, L.P. managed over $130 billion of client assets when it was acquired in 2000.

Tang was educated at Phillips Academy. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Yale University and a master's degree in business administration with distinction from Harvard Business School.

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Ming Zhong
Director, Asia Relations & Development
Tufts University, Advancement

Ming Zhong is the director of Asia relations and development at Tufts University Advancement, a position created in 2008 as Tufts further strengthened its international outreach effort. Zhong works closely with many departments in advancement, including alumni relations, principal gifts and development teams of graduate schools—as well as with faculty, admissions and the Tufts International Center—to coordinate Tufts' effort in Asia and cultivate donors.

Zhong began her career in advancement in 1993 at Harvard University's central development office, moving from staff assistant to prospect researcher, to development coordinator for Asia Operations. In 2000, she became the director of prospect research and management at Tufts University Advancement, where she initiated wealth screening projects, worked on a major database migration, and began the prospect management service. She grew the prospect research and management team from a staff of 7 to 11.

Zhong received her bachelor's degree in English from Nanjing Normal University in Nanjing, China. She also completed two years of graduate work at East Asia Normal University and Shanghai International Studies University, both in Shanghai. She taught English at both high school and college levels in Nanjing before coming to the United States to pursue her master's degree in history at Clark University.

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Keynote Speaker

Inge T. Reichenbach
Vice President for Development
Yale University

Inge T. Reichenbach is an Officer of Yale University and serves as its vice president for development. She is currently leading the university's five-year, $3.5 billion "Yale Tomorrow Campaign," which is scheduled to end June 30, 2011. "Yale Tomorrow" is a comprehensive campaign, covering Yale College as well as all schools and units of the university. Among the major goals of the campaign are the expansion of Yale College through the addition of two new residential colleges and the academic development of Yale's West Campus as a major center of Yale's increased focus on the sciences. The campaign totaled $3.35 billion at the end of December, with six months remaining to reach the overall goal of $3.5 billion.

Prior to coming to Yale,  Reichenbach served as Cornell University's vice president of alumni affairs and development from 1995 to 2005, leading the school to record giving levels. She joined Cornell's Office of Public Affairs in 1979 and served in a variety of positions during her tenure at the university. From 1988 to 1995, she was director of Cornell's University Development Office. During these years, she directed Cornell's five-year capital campaign, which raised $1.5 billion, at the time the largest amount ever raised by any campaign. In addition to her work at Cornell, she held the positions of director of corporate giving at Colonial Williamsburg and director of development at Wesleyan University.

Reichenbach has presented widely on fundraising topics. Most recently, she was a speaker at a conference on university endowments in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum/James F. Byrnes Institut and the Baden Wuerttemberg Staatsministerium in Suttgart, Germany, and at the Evangelische Akademie, in Bad Boll. She was a speaker at two conferences on endowment funds in Paris in 2008 and 2010 hosted by the French Secretary of Finance, Christine Lagarde, and served on her Comité Stratégique Fonds de Dotation. She contributed a chapter to the recently published Across Frontiers: New International Perspectives on Educational Fundraising (CASE, 2010) and wrote the article on Endowment Funds "A la Francaise" from an American Perspective, in Courier Juridique des Finances et de l'Industrie, Numero Special: Fonds de Dotations, Decembre 2010. (English and French).

A native of Germany, she studied classical and romance philology at the University of Heidelberg.

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