Faculty & Guest Speakers
Chair
Erika Jordan
As the Associate Senior Vice President, Alumni Relations at the University of Southern California, Erika Jordan serves as the chief alumni engagement officer for the campus and plays a key role in providing leadership and strategic guidance to ensure uninterrupted engagement for the nearly 500,000 alumni in the Trojan Family.
Prior to this role, Erika served as the Vice President, Alumni Engagement at Boston University where she led the Alumni Engagement, Annual Giving, and the Development Events & Communications teams. Additionally, she spent six years serving as Assistant Vice Chancellor, Alumni & Constituent Engagement at UC Irvine. Throughout her career she has been instrumental in exponentially growing alumni engagement and annual fundraising, elevating communications and events, establishing 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. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Howard University and executive masters in leadership from USC.
Faculty
James Allan
Since November 2024, James Allan has served as the assistant vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association.
Allan brings two decades of experience in alumni relations and development. Before joining Johns Hopkins, he served as vice president of advancement at the University of Calgary, where he led the creation and implementation of major branding initiatives, reputational activities, events, and programs that engaged more than 35,000 alumni and community members annually.
Earlier in his career, Allan was director of Alumni Relations at the University of Melbourne. There he developed and implemented a comprehensive engagement strategy for Melbourne's 420,000+ alumni and 27,000+ donors. He also played a key role in the university's $1 billion philanthropic and engagement campaign.
Allan holds a doctorate in communications from the University of Massachusetts, a master's degree in communications from McGill University, and a bachelor's degree in English and history from the University of Toronto.
Cindy Fredrick
Cindy Fredrick serves as the University of Virginia’s Senior Associate Vice President for Engagement, a role she has held since 2006. She leads a team of 70 professionals, 15 student employees, and more than 700 volunteers, advancing initiatives that strengthen connections among more than 285,000 alumni, as well as parents, families, and friends.
She oversees more than 1,300 in-person and virtual events each year, engaging more than 60,000 constituents through volunteer geographic networks, lifelong learning, travel, and donor experiences. Cindy also leads the annual giving team responsible for direct marketing, virtual philanthropy, pan-University giving societies, and scholarship and endowment stewardship.
Before joining UVA, Cindy served as Executive Director of Madison House, UVA’s volunteer service nonprofit, and held leadership roles in nonprofit and service organizations focused on children’s theatre, advocacy, and healthcare.
Cindy holds a B.S.W. from Luther College and an M.Ed. from California State University, Sacramento. She is an active member of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, where she has served on the District III Board, chaired the annual conference, member of the Alumni Relations Commission, and served on the Summit planning committee. A frequent CASE speaker, she is a Crystal Apple Award recipient for outstanding teaching and is recognized as a CASE Laureate.
Colin Hennessy
Colin Hennessy brings over 15 years of professional fundraising and management experience with expertise in annual giving, alumni engagement, segmentation strategy, data analysis, and more. He is recognized as an industry leader with a proven track record of developing philanthropic pipelines through thoughtful interventions informed by behavioral economics, data science, stewardship, and engagement.
As Vice President for Alumni and Donor Engagement, Colin leads a team dedicated to supporting the University of Iowa through thoughtful and innovative engagement and programming—overseeing alumni engagement, communication and marketing, events, and stewardship efforts.
Before joining the UI Center for Advancement in 2022, Colin held leadership positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago. In addition, he was a senior vice president and practice area leader at the fundraising management consulting firm Grenzebach Glier and Associates. Colin earned his bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies from the University of Iowa, a master’s degree in adult and distance education from the University of Phoenix, a master’s in public policy and administration from Iowa State University, and a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the 2019 Diane Thompson Award Winner for Excellence in Annual Giving from the Northeast Annual Giving Conference Association. In addition, Colin is a CASE Crystal Apple Award-winning speaker and teacher, in addition to the numerous CASE Circle of Excellence Awards presented to teams under his leadership.
Guest Speakers
Alexander Beard
Alexander (Alex) holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from Virginia Tech, with a focus on public dialogue and the application of design thinking methodologies, applied improvisation, and the arts for social change. Throughout his career, Alex has specialized in public affairs, community development strategy, programs, and policy.
With over a decade of experience at Loudoun County Government, Alex concentrated on young adult trajectories and community development. More recently, Alex led the Federal Reserve Financial Services (FRFS) Speakers Bureau, enhancing global public relations and market education. In this role, Alex spearheaded the development and project management of the systemwide FRFS external engagement and relationship development framework.
Alex’s strong interpersonal skills allowed him to expand the Federal Reserve’s Key Influencer portfolio by forging relationships with Fortune 500 companies across various industries. This facilitated intelligence gathering in conjunction with the Fed’s FRFS Market Intel Program and the Payments Policy Group, while also supporting market education through collaborative and influential engagement efforts.
Alex joined the Office of Career Development & Professional Engagement in 2023 and enjoys supporting the William & Mary community.
Alex is passionate about the arts and improvisational theatre. He founded Virginia Tech's first long-form improvisational theatre ensemble and further honed his skills through studies at iO and the Second City Conservatory in Chicago. Over the past 15 years, Alex has taught, directed, and performed professionally at prestigious venues such as the Kennedy Center, UCB Theatre, Second City, iO, and the Washington Improv Theater, among others. Since 2009, he has leveraged his expertise in improvisational theatrical methods as a consultant and training facilitator for businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the public sector.
Mark Menzel
Mark is the Associate Vice President and Managing Director, Engagement Business Strategies for WFAA. For the past 6 years, Mark has been responsible for aligning branding and engagement initiatives to strategic outcomes and leads a team representing various facets of engagement experiences and operations. Before his current role, Mark spent 15 years at WAA/WFAA within the marketing/communications division as lead of the marketing team. There he helped promote many of the organization’s engagement efforts as well as served as strategic lead on the membership and annual giving teams.
Prior to joining WFAA, Mark spent nearly a decade in the advertising and promotions agency world, helping create strong brands and successfully driving sales of various packaged-goods or service-based clients.
A University of Wisconsin alumnus, Mark graduated with a BA in Journalism and Psychology.
Sarah Schutt
Sarah Schutt is the Chief Alumni Engagement Officer for the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA) and Executive Director of the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) – a role she has held since 2017.
As the Chief Alumni Engagement Officer, Sarah leads a team of 40 alumni relations professionals who welcome, inform and connect a global community of 480,000 UW-Madison alumni, and work collaboratively across advancement to inspire support for the university. The scope of the alumni relations team includes: enrichment and donor stewardship programs, signature events and celebrations, alumni chapters and networks, travel, membership, international advancement, advocacy, as well as a visitor center and Alumni Park. Sarah is active in the Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE) and serves on their board as Membership Chair.
Most of Sarah’s 32-year career in higher education has been at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining WAA in 2001, she worked with outreach programming in the UW School of Education’s Center on Education and Work. Sarah started her career in student affairs and spent nearly ten years working in residential life at several institutions, including UW-Madison. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Iowa and a Master of Science degree from University in Minnesota - Mankato. She and her husband, Don, live in McFarland, Wisconsin and have two adult sons.
K Shelton
K Shelton is Director of Analytics & Business Intelligence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where they lead data strategy and analytics initiatives that strengthen data-informed decision making across advancement. K partners closely with fundraising and alumni engagement teams to translate complex institutional data and systems into actionable insights that enable more targeted outreach, stronger alumni connections, and improved fundraising performance. K also contributed to the development and implementation of a new Salesforce CRM environment, supporting data strategy, change management, and staff training.
Prior to joining Chicago Booth, K held roles in Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving at the University of Chicago before transitioning into a data strategy role supporting those programs.
K holds a Master of Science in Psychology with a focus in systems theory from Capella University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts with a minor in Women and Gender Studies from Columbia College Chicago.