Headshot of Yvette Eastham

Yvette Eastham

Chief Institutional Advancement Officer
Hopkinsville Community College
Award Winner
2021 Beth K. Fields Award

Bio

Eastham has served at Hopkinsville Community College since 2008 as Chief Institutional Advancement Officer and Executive Director of the HCC Foundation, Inc. In her role overseeing marketing and communication, she has developed a team dynamic and expectation of herself that includes pivoting to immediate and urgent needs as diverse as creation and editing of video and generation of press releases.

Eastham previously served as Regional Director for the Council for Resource Development (CRD), an affiliate council of the American Association of Community Colleges serving Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. With CRD, she guided the recognition of Hopkinsville Rotary for the national award, Benefactor of the Year in 2011. Eastham has served on the CASE Kentucky conference committee for several years. For CASE District III, she has spoken at numerous conferences and served on the conference planning committee for a number of years. She has co-chaired the Small College and Schools track, served as moderator, and facilitated set-up and speaker gifts. She began her first three-year term on the Cabinet of CASE District III in July of 2021. She is the recipient of numerous awards from CASE District III, CASE Kentucky, CASE Circle of Excellence Silver Award, and NCMPR.

The scope and scale of the success Yvette Eastham has achieved across her career have bettered the lives of community college students not only in her present place of service but across the Commonwealth and South Carolina. As a consummate community college professional, her resource development efforts have impacted student services, workforce development, humanities, and the arts. At each college she has served to her present position, she has continually exceeded the expectations of the colleges she has served. Most significantly, she has promoted others around her, ensuring that their professional efforts are recognized and awarded professional development scholarships for development office staff. Further, she has demonstrated in functional, real ways leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the recruitment of board members and recognition of the contributions of all parts of the community. During the pandemic, Eastham has led her college writing all the grants for stimulus funding, bringing millions of dollars in stimulus revenue to the college to further assist students and address income losses to the college. She is a visionary leader who has obtained phenomenal results with very limited staff because of her contagious enthusiasm.Â