Kathi Dantley Warren has 25 years of advancement leadership experience at higher education and academic medical institutions in $1B+ campaigns. Most recently, she served as vice president for development and alumni relations at Rice University where she launched a $2B campaign, the largest at a private institution in TX. At Rice, she also led a team of 150 with responsibility for principal and major gifts, gift planning, alumni relations, corporate and foundation relations, presidential events, donor relations, annual giving, marketing and communications, and advancement services. 

Under her leadership, Rice set new fundraising records in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, and also broke a record for giving to the Rice Annual Fund, while steadily growing annual fund participation. In 2020, she led Rice to securing its first nine-figure gift, followed by a second in 2021. She established new standards for organizational excellence within the development and alumni relations division by implementing a division-wide annual planning process and instituting a slate of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. 

Prior to Rice, Dantley Warren served as senior executive director of development at the Duke University Cancer Institute, where they successfully completed a $200 million campaign. From 2010 to 2014, she served as assistant dean for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University’s College of Engineering, where she developed and implemented the college’s first alumni affairs and development strategic plan and alumni engagement plan and increased annual revenues from $22.7 million to more than $56 million. 

She spent eight years at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, ultimately serving as campaign director, and was a major gift officer at The Johns Hopkins University Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Dantley Warren earned a masters degree in cellular and molecular biology from Duke University and a bachelors in biology from Hampton University. Originally from Northern Virginia, she is an avid sports enthusiast and dog-rescue advocate who also enjoys travel, cooking and painting.