Assistant Vice President, Faculty Engagement

PURPOSE STATEMENT

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute seeks an experienced and dynamic leader to serve as Assistant Vice President, Faculty Engagement (AVP). This newly established role offers a unique opportunity to transform and strengthen collaboration between the Division of Philanthropy at Dana-Farber and the Institute’s world-renowned faculty, amplifying donor experiences and advancing Dana-Farber’s mission to defy cancer. The AVP will create and lead a strategic Faculty Engagement function, guiding interactions between Philanthropy staff and Institute faculty to ensure alignment, efficiency, and excellence in donor cultivation and stewardship. By equipping faculty with the tools and training to partner effectively with donors and empowering gift officers with relevant insights and information on breakthrough research and scientific priorities, the AVP will establish a function that earns a reputation as a trusted, transparent, and collaborative partner. The AVP and members of the Faculty Engagement team will play a vital enabling role—aligning efforts, optimizing collaboration, and supporting peers to achieve ambitious goals and exceptional fundraising results. This role represents a rare opportunity for a visionary leader to shape a culture of innovation, inclusion, and shared success at a pivotal moment in Dana-Farber’s history.

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Division of Philanthropy at Dana-Farber consistently raises over $400 million annually in service to patients and families, due to the hard work of its dedicated staff and committed donors working together to achieve Dana-Farber’s mission to create a world without cancer. In September 2024, the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the Institute’s history, The Dana-Farber Campaign, was completed and raised a record breaking $2.5 billion. This multi-billion-dollar campaign was one of the largest ever in the U.S. focused solely on cancer and accelerated the Institute’s strategic priorities by supporting revolutionary science, extraordinary care, exceptional expertise, and essential opportunities.

Reporting to the Associate Vice President, Campaign and Strategic Engagement, Erin McVeigh, the Assistant Vice President, Faculty Engagement directs the interactions and management of the Division of Philanthropy’s 300+ person team with Dana-Farber’s faculty (450+ individual interactions annually) pertaining to donor engagement and stewardship. This position will boost processes, efficiencies, and standards of excellence to maximize the donor experience through collaborative efforts between philanthropy staff and faculty, and to assist the entire Division with reaching financial goals.

The incoming AVP will establish and lead a new Faculty Engagement function for the Division of Philanthropy including setting the strategic direction for this center of expertise to source philanthropic priorities from Dana-Farber leaders, train faculty members in philanthropy, assign prospective donors, train gift officers on Institute initiatives, and manage a team of Faculty Engagement Directors, including overseeing the budget, performance management, evaluation of results, and creation of strategies to readjust goals as needed to achieve objectives in supporting the Division of Philanthropy’s $400M+ annual fundraising target.

The ideal candidate is a collaborative, strategic, and relationship-driven leader with a deep understanding of donor relations, faculty engagement, and philanthropy in complex, mission-driven organizations. They will bring a proven track record of designing and scaling programs that align diverse stakeholders around shared goals, ideally in healthcare, research, or academic settings, and will excel at fostering productive relationships between diverse constituents, including faculty, donors, and philanthropy professionals.

This individual excels at translating institutional priorities into compelling donor cases for support, fostering alignment and understanding between faculty and Philanthropy teams. With exceptional organizational and analytical skills, they are adept at managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment, ensuring high standards of execution and results. A forward-thinking mindset and solutions-oriented approach will be critical, as will a steadfast commitment to Dana-Farber’s mission to create a world without cancer.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Establish and lead a new Faculty Engagement function for the Division of Philanthropy including setting the strategic direction for this center of expertise in sourcing philanthropic priorities from Dana-Farber leaders.
• Manage a team of Faculty Engagement Directors (three and one Assistant), including overseeing the budget, performance management, evaluation of results, and creation of strategies to readjust goals as needed to achieve objectives in supporting the Division’s annual financial goals.
• Collaborate with Dana-Farber’s executive leadership team, department chairs, and their delegates to develop and manage processes to regularly articulate and monitor fundraising priorities, in partnership with relevant Division of Philanthropy leaders.
• Lead the Faculty Engagement team’s partnerships with gift officers and faculty members to deliver transformative experiences for donors and prospective donors through their interactions with faculty, including providing strategic support and direction for donor visits, gift proposals, stewardship reports, and event participation, among other examples. On average, 450+ unique faculty, staff, early career researchers, and others will be engaged with at the direction of the Faculty Engagement team.
• Oversee the creation of portfolios of faculty for the team to ensure that all faculty have a point of contact within the Division of Philanthropy and all priority areas of the Institute are covered.
• Build out and lead expectations and execution of regular cadence of faculty meetings for the team including best practices for sharing prospect pipelines, donor engagement, resource progress, and relevant financials.
• Curate and conduct a comprehensive training and education curriculum for faculty and philanthropy staff.
• Partner with faculty and the Division of Philanthropy’s Prospect Research team in donor acquisition, gift officer assignment, and ongoing qualification efforts.

QUALIFICATIONS & CHARACTERISTICS

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• 10+ years of donor and volunteer experience required.
• Leadership experience in developing or growing new initiatives or functions required.
• Management of professional staff required.
• Excellent track record of collaborating with academic or industry experts and executive leadership in achieving fundraising goals.

ABOUT DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE

In 1947, Sidney Farber, MD, founded the Children's Cancer Research Foundation, dedicated to providing compassionate, state-of-the-art treatment to children with cancer while developing the cancer preventatives, treatments, and cures of the future.

The foundation officially expanded its programs to include patients of all ages in 1969, and in 1974 became known as the Sidney Farber Cancer Center in honor of its founder. The long-term support of the Charles A. Dana Foundation was acknowledged by incorporating the Institute under its present name in 1983.

Today, the Institute employs more than 5,000 staff, faculty, and clinicians supporting more than 640,000 annual outpatient visits, more than 1,000 hospital discharges per year, and has over 1,100 open clinical trials. Dana-Farber is internationally renowned for its equal commitment to cutting edge research and provision of excellent patient care. The deep expertise in these two areas uniquely positions Dana-Farber to develop, test, and gain FDA approval for new cancer therapies in its laboratories and clinical settings. Dana-Farber researchers have contributed to the development of 35 of 75 cancer drugs recently approved by the FDA for use in cancer patients.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, a federally designated Center for AIDS Research, and a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, a federally designated comprehensive cancer center. Dana-Farber also maintains affiliations with several schools of nursing in the Boston area.

Providing advanced training in cancer treatment and research for an international faculty, the Institute conducts community-based programs in cancer prevention, detection, and control throughout New England, and maintains joint programs with other Boston institutions affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham, including Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dana-Farber is supported by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the generous support of numerous foundations and individuals who contribute to the Institute's individual research and clinic programs or to the Jimmy Fund, the principal charity of the Institute, named for one of its child patients.