About the Winner

Casilda Pagan is the current Assistant Director of Alumni Engagement at San Diego State University. Casilda is a true rising star in alumni engagement and advancement. As a Certified Volunteer Administrator, she brings the principles and ideals of volunteer management as utilized in social enterprise and apply them holistically in alumni engagement. Her enthusiasm for tapping into alumni interests and helping them find their passion project drives her to engage alumni across grad years and degree programs, promoting philanthropy and connectedness throughout the alumni sphere.

Casilda's work with volunteers shows the depth of her experience. She has interacted with volunteers across a wide span of industries, from grassroots advocacy, cultural museums to food insecurity. She then focused her energy on promoting volunteerism in higher education with the primary objective of helping to increase the amount of engaged regional chapters and groups. 

Within Casilda's first year, she developed and implemented a structure and process that led to a sustained increase in volunteer engagement and equally important, community engagement. Her dedicated work to help volunteer leaders of groups and clubs succeed resulted in an activity tracking dashboard empowering them to make decisions based on data and allowing for more cost-effective and wide-ranging alumni engagement. The Alumni Club Engagement Dashboard earned her Gold recognition in the 2019 CASE District VII Awards of Excellence Volunteer Engagement and Leadership category.

It is deeply rooted in Casilda and her work to elevate the opportunities for alumni engagement through volunteerism and cultivate a strong pipeline of volunteers and donors. She seeks out every opportunity for collaborative work with campus and community partners. Her efforts directly led to the identification of five new members for the alumni board of directors, bringing diversity and cultural inclusiveness to this influential group.

Casilda continued to build upon the momentum. In four years, her work with volunteer leaders of groups and clubs, helped grow overall alumni engagement by more than 75%.

Further, she helped create a robust philanthropic pipeline by incorporating a campus 5k tradition into the local, national and international volunteer group repertoire. This 5k, held annually to raise funds for student scholarships, gained a global following which opened the program to alumni across the world to participate philanthropically.