This week, the debrief begins to talk about returning to work and the outlook on FY22 with Joan O’Nell, Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development at Yale University. We recorded this episode one month ago, on the one year anniversary of working in a remotely. Joan tells us about Yale’s planning for their first ever virtual campaign launch for the fall. She also tells us about two big gifts that were closed during the virtual environment. She weighs what is easier and harder with a virtual practice.

Prior to her appointment as vice president for alumni affairs and development in July 2012, Ms. O’Neill spent eight years as associate vice president for development leading the major gifts, parent giving, planned giving, annual giving, and reunion giving programs, which together contributed $1.2 billion of the Yale Tomorrow campaign's total. Ms. O’Neill held earlier positions as area director at the Yale School of Medicine, as director of special projects and assistant to the vice president for development, as director of leadership and major gifts, and as a director in principal gifts for Yale’s previous capital campaign, which concluded in 1997. She first joined Yale in 1987 as a major gift officer.

Ms. O’Neill received a B.A. in psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Please connect on instagram @devdebrief or check out our website at www.thedevelopmentdebrief.com