SIGAP Leadership

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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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 is the Associate Dean for Advancement for Columbia’s Climate School, which includes the Earth Institute and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, managing a growing development team across two Columbia campuses focused on one of Columbia's 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."

Maura McGinnity is Senior Director of Development for Strategic Initiatives at Stanford University, where she serves the Vice Provost and Dean of Research. She has a long track record of building strategic partnerships among philanthropists, faculty, institutional leaders, and colleagues in benefit of human well-being.

Maura’s background in collaborative major/principal fundraising, organizational strategy, business development, marketing, and communications have helped her creatively lead team efforts to secure multiple transformative gifts for Stanford’s cross-disciplinary initiatives in the life sciences. This includes lead investments in the Sapp Center for Science Teaching and Learning, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, Sarafan ChEM-H, Stanford Bio-X, the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, and the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience. She is now leading the fundraising strategy for the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence.

“I am grateful to be among the incredibly talented advancement professionals of the SIGAP community, who bring mission-driven energy and focus to making remarkable outcomes possible through meaningful, high impact philanthropy.”