Meet Our Experts: Emily DeYoung

Emily DeYoung
Vice President of Educational Programs
Areas of Expertise:
- Event planning and leadership
- Advancement competencies and curriculum development
- Strategic planning
I began my career in undergraduate admissions at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. I was motivated by the opportunity to assist students and families at a pivotal point in their journey. As a first-generation college graduate, I credit education with opening my worldview and unlocking opportunities that changed the course of my life. I gravitated toward events and marketing within my admissions roles, and when I relocated to Washington, D.C., I continued to grow my skill set as an event planner.
But something was missing. I wanted to be close to education and to feel that I was delivering on a greater sense of purpose again. That led me to CASE 15 years ago, when I was hired to coordinate three of CASE’s signature programs in the U.S./Canada region. I knew almost instantly that I had found a new professional home.
Over time, my work has evolved and broadened just as CASE’s role as the global provider of professional development for advancement professionals has evolved and broadened.
The next chapter for CASE’s education programs finishes the work we started with volunteers to create the CASE Competencies Model. Now, based on the model, we have developed a Career Journey Framework: a continuum of career development from foundational to transformative leadership marked by acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities. Together, the framework and competencies are driving us as we develop targeted training and services for advancement professionals throughout their careers, including, but not limited to, CASE’s education programming.
As we build curricula and education offerings that focus on specific, consistent learning objectives in the Career Journey Framework, you will start to see us explore different modalities. I am excited that CASE, in addition to delivering in-person learning opportunities, will shift from offering emergency remote learning during the pandemic to purposefully designed online courses.
Our first online course about the CASE Global Reporting Standards launched in April and continues to enroll professionals looking to build expertise in foundational principles, definitions, and reporting practices that guide our profession.
CASE’s educational offerings will continue to be informed and delivered by advancement professionals from around the globe with whom I’ve had the distinct privilege of working. I see firsthand their talent, warmth, expertise, and passion for their work and CASE’s mission. They are our subject matter experts: the best people to breathe life into our educational offerings.
There are skills, knowledge, and abilities that are essential across advancement. These need to be captured in and woven through everything we do and offer our members. A goal of this work is that you will be able to assess yourself and your teams using the framework, with the assessment’s results charting a path to the CASE resources that will best suit their professional needs.
All of this progress won’t happen overnight, but now we have the tools and the team. And we are motivated to use them to professionalize and mobilize the advancement profession for a strong and dynamic future.
Stay tuned for updates on CASE conferences and check out our Standards course. We look forward to the possibilities ahead!
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July - August 2022
What's Behind Leadership: This issue of Currents peels back the layers of leadership, exploring what helps leaders (and their teams) thrive today.