SIGAP Leadership

Leti McNeill Light

President

Leti Light is a leader in higher education fundraising for transformational philanthropic partnerships, often in the form of cross-cutting, multidisciplinary initiatives.

As Executive Director, Principal Gifts & Strategic Initiatives at UC Berkeley, Leti and her team partner with a wide range of academic and program leaders and work with the world’s leading philanthropists to achieve their vision through partnerships with the university designed to make Berkeley’s highest aspirations possible. Over the last 20 years, Leti has led philanthropic development efforts at Cornell University, UCLA, and now UC Berkeley.

“SIGAP has been such a gift. I am grateful for being connected to this powerful network and it has opened my eyes to a wide range of strategies, styles, and ideas for how we can be leaders in transformational philanthropy that solves society’s greatest challenges.”

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Ben Porter

Treasurer and Co-founder, Strategic Initiatives Conference

Ben Porter is the Associate Dean of Advancement at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He has held many leadership roles as part of Northwestern’s $5B We Will campaign, including with the business school, engineering school, office of principal gifts, and interdisciplinary research centers.  He got his start in the development profession as a program assistant at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2002.

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Ben is the author of a CASE book, The Principal Gifts Checklist: How to Cultivate and De-Risk Gifts of $5M-$100M+ (2019).  He is a Princeton graduate.

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“Over several years, Strategic Initiative Conference attendees have become friends and colleagues, and I have benefited enormously through my affiliation with what has become SIGAP.”

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Matt Hutter

Secretary 

Matt Hutter is Assistant Vice President of Development for Duke Science and Technology at Duke University and oversees a $1B fundraising campaign focused on supporting basic science, materials science, computational science and biomedical science research.  Previously, Matt was Executive Director of Development for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Oregon where he led fundraising for science within a $3B comprehensive campaign and managed both the corporate relations and foundation relations teams.

Matt specializes in designing and leading large, multi-unit science fundraising initiatives and securing principal gifts in support of the same.  Matt began his career at the Claremont Colleges.

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“It is an honor to serve the SIGAP community, within which I’ve been able to form great relationships across the globe.”

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Meghan Fay

Vice President, Programming

Meghan Fay is the Senior Director of Development for Columbia University’s Earth Institute and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, managing a growing development team across two Columbia campuses focused on one of Columbia's Campaign priority areas -- Climate.

Prior to her focus on climate, Meghan worked on another Columbia priority area - neuroscience - serving as the inaugural Director of Development for what was then the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative and through philanthropy transitioned into the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.

"It's inspiring to be engaged with colleagues from various institutions who are focused on transformational philanthropy in support of strategic initiatives.  SIGAP provides a unique space for our community to share best practices."

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