Ben Fiore-Walker
Senior Director of CASE’s Opportunity and Inclusion Center

Areas of expertise:

• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging
• Neuroscience
• Educational access

I am a lifelong educator. Throughout my career, I have dedicated myself to opening the path of education to all. My guiding mantra is that I want to give students, especially those from historically underserved communities, the tools to make choices about their educational goals before those choices are made for them because they didn’t have the information they needed.  

I came to this approach because, throughout my journey in education, I was always one of very few Black students in my classes. I realized this was because I was privileged enough, through the sacrifices of my parents, to go to independent Quaker schools during the K-12 years. But I also noticed this as I went on to college and to graduate school. When I became a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, I decided to use my privileged position to conduct outreach to local Washington, D.C., schools. Since I was studying neuroscience, I used that as a hook to get K-12 students interested in learning. When you walk into a classroom carrying a human brain in a bucket, you get the students’ attention! Through this outreach and dedicated workshops and seminars, I aligned my career to create, promote, and champion programs, products, and professional environments that help make the attainment of education a reality for underserved communities, employees, and volunteers. 

One of the attractions for me in coming to CASE in November 2021 was CASE’s dedication to its mission of equipping advancement professionals with the tools to act effectively and with integrity to champion student success at their institutions. I see this as directly analogous to my mantra. Another aspect of CASE that drew my attention was the authentic commitment to diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging. This approach is woven into the fabric of CASE’s strategic intent, with a focus on the sole idea that everyone has a right to opportunity access, the feeling of belonging, and a chance for success.  

So when I had the opportunity to come on board to lead the new Opportunity and Inclusion Center, I jumped at the chance. The OIC aims to provide growth for advancement professionals grounded in the CASE Competencies Model, which will result in successful career journeys and create apprenticeship experiences for underrepresented populations within advancement. The crux of this strategic intent is to give advancement professionals the tools not only to be successful but also to help their organizations meet their strategic goals. One of the important first steps to do this is to dismantle the pervasive barriers that exist in the advancement field for people with diverse lived experiences. The OIC is poised to help our members identify and eliminate these systemic barriers within their organizations and, thus, the field of advancement through new products and services and existing CASE resources. I believe that the work of the OIC not only will allow CASE to live into one of its core beliefs of professional excellence in the advancement field but will allow CASE and our member institutions to achieve, foster, and maintain inclusive excellence within the profession. 

Inclusive excellence is the framework for thinking about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the context of student success in education. What this means for education is embedding DEIB principles and strategies across the entire institution and not just in the curriculum. By doing so, we broaden the definition of who is and can become excellent. Therefore, as the OIC works with our members to identify and dismantle systemic barriers, promote belonging and inclusiveness, and increase DEIB acumen, we are creating a climate of inclusive excellence that allows institutions to leverage diversity as a resource to meet their strategic goals. For education and lifelong learning to transform lives and society, they need to be accessible to more than just a privileged few.