About Colin

Colin Hennessy serves as the Executive Director of Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving and head of the University of Chicago Alumni Association. In this role, he leads the overall strategy and direction for University-wide engagement and annual giving activities and spearheads the University’s ambitious alumni participation efforts. From 2018 to 2019, Hennessy served as Associate Dean of Alumni Relations and Development for the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. As a member of the Dean’s senior leadership team, he provided advice and counsel on all matters related to alumni relations and philanthropy and was a core member of the team charged with the grand opening of the Keller Center, the new home of Harris Public Policy.

Previously, he served as executive director of The Penn Fund at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, he oversaw the global undergraduate annual giving program and the largest of the university's annual funds. Under his direction, The Penn Fund won national awards from CASE, for partnership with Wharton School faculty on fundraising experimental design and testing, and steadily increased annual alumni donor participation and both unrestricted and endowed scholarship revenue to the university. Prior to joining Penn, Hennessy held positions at the University of Iowa Foundation, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and as a global training and implementation manager specializing in the implementation of complex information technology solutions for local government, healthcare, and direct store delivery vendors.

He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa and a doctorate in higher education management from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the 2019 Diane Thompson Award Winner for Excellence in Annual Giving from the Northeast Annual Giving Conference Association and CASE Crystal Apple Award winning speaker.

About Brittany

Brittany Shaff is the Assistant Vice President of Digital Engagement + Philanthropic Giving at the University of Miami. In her role, she oversees an innovative team that focuses on creating personalized and measured experiences supporting all units across the University and the University of Miami Health System. Her team is constantly testing and improving new ways to engage, measure, and retarget current and prospective donors. Prior to this role, she served in various analytics and marketing positions including at the University of San Francisco, Towson University, and Johns Hopkins University and Medicine.