Faculty
Meet Your Chair
Natalee Ellars
Natalee Ellars is the senior executive director, alumni engagement at UC San Diego. She leads the Alumni Engagement team which includes university-wide alumni engagement, volunteer leadership, regional engagement, student engagement, alumni relations, alumni marketing and digital outreach.
Natalee’s prior advancement experience includes more than 10 years at UCLA Alumni in leadership roles as Senior Director, Events and Business Development; Senior Director Marketing and Membership; and Executive Director. She has been recognized for her management of numerous UCLA Alumni Days, including the most recent Centennial celebration; serving on the taskforce for the UCLA External Affairs CRM system; establishing the UCLAONE online alumni portal; as well as leading the marketing and membership teams through their transition to an “all-in” engagement model.
Passion for data and reporting is a legacy of Natalee’s first career, a decade in financial services. That passion is equally matched with her genuine care for people and building community. Natalee has a strong foundation in marketing and communications and is best known for her ability to lead through challenges with creativity and a positive attitude.
Natalee is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College with a B.A. in History and Organizational Psychology. She and her family are avid travelers and supporters of the arts.
Faculty
Erika Jordan
As the Vice President, Alumni Engagement at Boston University, Erika Jordan serves as the chief alumni engagement for the campus and plays a key role in providing leadership and strategic guidance to the Alumni Engagement, Annual Giving, and Development Communications and Events teams.
Prior to this role, Erika served as the Assistant Vice Chancellor, Alumni & Constituent Engagement at UC Irvine. She was instrumental in growing alumni engagement, developing the engagement and annual fundraising programs, growing the annual fundraising by establishing campaigns like UCI Giving Day, UCI’s dual alumni engagement campaign goal and leading special projects.
Erika has spent her career in politics, special events, alumni relations, frontline fundraising, and served as the director, Alumni Relations and Annual Giving for the USC Marshall School of Business prior to joining UCI. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Howard University and executive masters in leadership from USC.
Rose Laden
Rose Laden is the executive director of alumni relations at Villanova University, where she provides strategic direction and leadership for an alumni engagement program serving 130k+ constituents. Prior to Villanova she spent 10 years at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was director of alumni engagement and programming. In this role, she led a team responsible for several areas, including the strategic direction of 77 independent alumni organizations worldwide, online engagement and services, alumnae programs, and served as a core member of the team responsible for launching Wharton's comprehensive lifelong learning program. Some outcomes of this work include a popular faculty webinar series, Women's Circles, an in-person program designed to create a personal board of directors for participants, and the development of a volunteer-driven engagement program that resulted in a 300% increase in philanthropic participation over 5 years. Rose previously worked in alumni relations at Thomas Jefferson University and West Chester University. She is a graduate of West Chester University from the Communications and International Business programs, and received her M.S. in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania.