While much of my career has been devoted to executive management of capital, endowment and annual campaigns as a professional fundraising consultant, I have also served as a senior manager and chief development officer of non-profit institutions.
My career began in development began in 1984 when I was recruited to join the Martin J. Moran Company, a fundraising consulting firm headquartered in New York City. I was promoted within a few years to Executive Vice President and with the responsibility for supervision of regional major capital and endowment campaigns. I served as Director of Development for the University of Denver School of Law and as a senior executive for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
I established Upway Consulting in the late 1990’s as opportunities arose to conduct a series of capital campaigns. Upway Consulting has provided service to a variety of arts, education and human-service non-profits since then.
In recent years, I served as Chief Advancement Officer of the Denver Scholarship Foundation (2015-2018), which grew over three years employing a strategic emphasis on major gifts and endowment funding from $4.5 million to $7 million. DSF now provides well over $5 million in scholarships to low-income graduates of the Denver Public School system, as well as college advising and mentoring services at the high school and college level.
Other positions include service as Chief Development Officer for Girl Scouts of Colorado, and Canon Steward of Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, where I was responsible for fundraising, community outreach, interfaith and ecumenical relations for ten years. My international experience includes service as U.S. Director for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund during the Rwandan Civil War and Genocide in the 1990’s, and supervision of a capital campaign in Northern Ireland for a girl’s grammar school during the period of conflict between the Irish Republican Army and the United Kingdom.
Community Service
I now serve on the board of the Community College of Denver Foundation as its Chair. I am also serving on the boards of St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal School and Mile High Early Learning, and on the Vestry (board) of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral.
I am a former president of the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado and the St. Martin’s Chamber Choir. I co-founded the Abrahamic Initiative, which since 2011 has invited Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders and laypeople into dialogue and collaborative community service, and I served as chair of its steering committee for several years. I have also served on the boards of the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes, The Denver Botanic Gardens, and Colorado Preservation, Inc.
Education
I received my Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1978, and a Master of Arts in Social Sciences, with a concentration on Middle East economic and social development, from the University of Chicago in 1981. I spent my junior year abroad studying in Parish at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Insitut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales.