
Faculty

Adrian Punaks
Adrian joined More Partnership in January 2022 as a Partner, and alongside More's community of experts he now works with a range of organisations across sectors globally to help them achieve their philanthropic ambitions. Before More he led all Advancement activity at University College London (UCL) since 2011.
With extensive leadership experience, he has over the last twenty years developed a deep understanding of effective practice across every aspect of fundraising and supporter engagement, as well as experience of nurturing and leading large, high-performing teams. At UCL he helped to drive one of Europe’s largest and most successful fundraising campaigns.
As Executive Director of Development at UCL, he led advancement activity in a department of 85 people, incorporating fundraising, alumni relations, communications and development operations, and was integral to the design and delivery of the UCL's £600m campaign, which closed early in 2020 having exceeded the target and achieving over 260,000 volunteering hours. Critical to this success was the way in which Adrian built trusted relationships with institutional leaders, senior volunteers, global philanthropists and high-profile academics and clinicians.
Adrian began his career at Birkbeck, University of London, where he helped establish the College’s first development function. He continued to build his career in individual and major giving at Imperial College London, before returning to Birkbeck in 2007 to lead the highly successful development and alumni relations teams.
In 2010, Adrian was awarded the inaugural Iain More Award which recognises the outstanding achievements of a development professional. He has also contributed extensively to insights and training across the philanthropy sector, not least through this work with CASE – including in his current role on the CASE Commission on Philanthropy (2021-23) and through the Spring Institute in Educational Fundraising (including three years as Chair).

Robert A. Burdenski
Chicago resident Bob Burdenski is a twenty-year friend of CASE Europe and an internationally-recognized expert, author and consultant in annual and regular giving fundraising strategies. He has worked with more than 200 institutions around the world, and is the author of the best-selling CASE books Innovations in Annual Giving: Ten Departures That Worked, More Innovations in Annual Giving: Ten Global Departures That Worked, and the new CASE e-book, Online Innovations in Annual and Regular Giving: Ten Dozen Departures That Worked.
Burdenski is a ten-time faculty member of the annual CASE Europe Spring Institute in Educational Fundraising at Loughborough University. In this role, he has taught hundreds of CASE Europe fundraisers their introduction to regular giving. He has also presented multiple CASE Regular Giving Masterclasses in the UK over the years, and presented CASE's first-ever regular giving programs in Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Ireland and Singapore. This past month, he served as chair of the CASE Institute for Senior Annual Giving Professionals.
Known for sharing many examples from many institutions in his talks, he is a 2008 recipient of the CASE Crystal Apple for his excellence in educating - and entertaining - his audiences.

Kirsty MacDonald
Kirsty MacDonald has over twenty-five years of fundraising experience in North America and the UK. Kirsty is currently Deputy Principal (Advancement) at the Royal Academy of Music in London. This new role was created to lead a campaign to celebrate the bicentenary of the Academy in 2022. Kirsty has worked in fundraising leadership roles at the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford. Her previous experience across higher education and the arts includes London Business School, English National Opera, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Glyndebourne. Kirsty has an Honours BA from the University of Toronto and in 2009 was awarded an MA Oxon.

Jennie Moule
Jennie is Founding Partner at fundraising operations consultancy, Alveo Consulting. She built her experience as Director of Development Strategy and Operations at University College London for over 10 years, where she managed fundraising operations overseeing prospect research, database, gift administration, budgeting, HR and facilities. She also led strategy and planning, particularly for their £600m campaign launched in September 2016.
A firm believer in sharing experience, driving improvement and giving practical support to those in the sector, Jennie is a sought-after speaker, trainer, mentor and coach. She was Interim Executive Director of CASE Europe from March to July 2017. In that assignment, she fulfilled a lead role in advocacy and thought leadership around GDPR and other fundraising regulation issues, meeting regularly with the ICO, DCMS and the Fundraising Regulator. Jennie was chair of the inaugural CASE Development Services conference in 2008 and remains a member of the planning committee 14 years later.

Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy is Director of Development at the National Theatre where he leads a department of 32 (plus 5 in New York) which raises £14 million per year across individuals, corporates and trusts and foundations.
He returned to the NT after an eight year stint in higher education at Birkbeck, University of London, where he was Director of Development and Alumni. Motivated by Birkbeck’s unique position as an evening university with social mobility at its core, Chris and his department were responsible for growing Birkbeck’s philanthropic ambitions and helping develop a culture of philanthropy within the College.
After studying French and German at the University of Manchester, Chris began his career by spending three years at Richmond Associates where he recruited senior-level development staff to leading organisations in the higher education, arts and charity sectors.
Chris attended the Spring Institute in 2008 and since then has spoken frequently at CASE events including the annual conference and chairing the Major Gifts Asking Workshop.

Steve O'Connor
During his 20 year career in advancement Steve has led fundraising and marketing teams at leading national charities, as Head of Fundraising at Macmillan Cancer Support and as UK Director of Fundraising at children’s charity Barnardo’s. In the HE sector he was the first Director of Development & Alumni Relations at the University of Leicester, also his alma mater, where the team secured the institution’s largest ever principal gift of £7m and won The Times Higher Education Award for most Innovative Fundraising Campaign. More recently he was Executive Director of Development & Alumni Relations at the University of Bristol, building a successful team that raised over £47m to support the University’s ambitions to widen access, invest in growing the academic faculty and build a new £500m city campus for digital enterprise, research and learning.
At Leicester, Steve is working closely with the new Vice-Chancellor Professor Nishan Canagarajah and the Executive team to realise the institution’s ambition to become a world leader for inclusivity in Higher Education. The University is committed to eliminating the awarding gap, addressing the chronic absence of BAME academics in the sector and launching the Leicester Institute for Inclusion in Higher Education.
Steve holds a BA (Hons) in Combined Arts and has been a regular contributor to conferences and seminars and is passionately committed to supporting the development of the next generation of Advancement practitioners and leaders.

Liz Reilly
Liz Reilly is Director of Philanthropy and Donor Relations at the University of Edinburgh; she joined the team in January 2015. Liz moved from Seattle, where she was Director of Development for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, a health care provider (with strong advocacy and educational programmes) serving patients in 30 clinics across three states. While there, Liz received the national Planned Parenthood Fundraiser of the Year Award. Liz has also been a campaign director, a fundraising consultant, and a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching at a secondary school in Malawi.
A bit unusually, Liz developed a passion for fundraising as a consultant. By working with and learning from a wide variety of nonprofits, Liz saw how fundraising not only enables acceleration and innovation in mission delivery through philanthropic revenue but also provides organisations with insights from their broad donor communities which can make them more impactful. Fundraisers have important roles both communicating out (representing their institution) and communicating in (representing donors and other stakeholders); this virtuous cycle creates more vibrant and relevant organisations. Relatedly, Liz believes strongly in both the role philanthropy can play in advancing social justice and the importance of maintaining a critical eye on philanthropy and how it can sometimes actually reinforce social inequities. An avid and omnivorous reader, Liz loves trading book recommendations and engaging in heated debates on this and many other topics.
Liz's own giving tends to focus on expanding access to education; this has also been a theme in some of her volunteering, including her current roles as Philanthropic Advisor to the Cowrie Scholarships Foundation and as board member on UNICEF UK's Scotland Advisory board. Having benefited from the support of many female mentors over the years, Liz is also a big believer in women lifting up other women and is always up for a coffee, virtual or otherwise.

Lorna Somers
An accomplished and successful fundraiser, Lorna spent the past 35 years at McMaster University where she has been engaged in securing some of the largest charitable gifts in Canadian history. She led two university-wide, comprehensive campaigns, both with a focus on volunteer and academic participation. She has also structured and led targeted campaigns for McMaster's Museum of Art and Faculty of Health Sciences, the University's Student Centre, and secured support for numerous endowments establishing scholarships, bursaries, chairs, and professorships. An accomplished and successful fundraiser, Lorna spent the past 35 years at McMaster University where she has been engaged in securing some of the largest charitable gifts in Canadian history. She led two university-wide, comprehensive campaigns, both with a focus on volunteer and academic participation. She has also structured and led targeted campaigns for McMaster's Museum of Art and Faculty of Health Sciences, the University's Student Centre, and secured support for numerous endowments establishing scholarships, bursaries, chairs, and professorships.
An internationally recognized teacher and facilitator in the fields of Higher Education and Institutional Advancement, Lorna has shared her expertise with educational, cultural and charitable organizations around the world. She is the recipient of numerous international awards for excellence in teaching and leadership, and is a sought-after speaker and coach on business, social and dining etiquette, frequently working with students to improve their confidence and knowledge as they launch their careers.
Lorna's volunteer leadership has been extensive and global with a three-decade commitment to the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE), the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), and the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP). Her contributions have included various volunteer roles as national and regional chair, conference chair, Board Trustee, Director, special advisor, and CASE Laureate.
Delia de Vreeze
Delia has more than 20 years' leadership experience in higher education including advancement, strategic alumni relations, (internationa0)l marketing & communications, teaching and student recruitment at various universities in The Netherlands.
Delia was the Director of the University Fund at Wageningen University & Research for the previous ten years, where she successfully led the ‘Food for Thought, Thought for Food’ campaign; the first major fundraising campaign for any Dutch university.
As of 1 April this year, Delia is the Director of the new department University Relations & Fundraising (DURF) at the VU Amsterdam.
Connecting people and organizations to universities is becoming ever more important. The connecting theme throughout Delia’s career has been to focus on the perspective of others in order to forge connections and to contribute to a better world together, based on the input of researchers, students and external stakeholders.
Delia has a Bachelor degree in International Hospitality Management and studied a Master programme in Management & Policy sciences at Radboud University Nijmegen.