SIGAP Leadership

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

She currently serves as Associate Vice Chancellor, University Development and Alumni Relations at UCSF, where she helps lead the design and focus of philanthropic engagement, including grateful patient, school, and basic science fundraising strategies. Prior to joining UCSF, she served as executive director of principal gifts and strategic initiatives at UC Berkeley. Earlier in her career, she served in advancement and strategy leadership roles at UCLA and Cornell University. She has close to 25 years of experience in the development field.

“SIGAP has been such a gift. I am grateful for being connected to this powerful network. 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 Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Duke University. In this role, Matt works closely with the Office of the Provost to engage the entirety of Duke to help identify, structure and launch multidisciplinary endeavors designed to tackle societal problems at scale through the power of philanthropy.

Matt also oversees the Duke Science and Technology and Duke Climate fundraising initiatives as part of Duke's Campaigns Team.  Prior to Duke, 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 Vice President for Medical School Development and Alumni Affairs.

Prior to her tenure at Yale, Meghan served as 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 this role, 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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Maura McGinnity is Vice President for Principal Gifts and Strategic Initiatives at Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health.  Prior to this role, Maura was Senior Assistant Dean of Development and External Relations for the College of Computing Data Science and Society at UC Berkeley.  A prominent member of the Bay Area philanthropic community,  Maura served as a development executive at Stanford University for nearly 18 years, most recently as the Senior Director of Development for the Vice Provost and Dean of Research. In this role, she created and led engagement and fundraising efforts for the interdisciplinary life sciences and human-centered AI. Maura has a long track record of building strategic partnerships among philanthropists, faculty, institutional leaders, and colleagues for the benefit of human well-being.

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Maura’s background in collaborative major/principal fundraising, organizational strategy, business development, marketing, and communications have helped her lead team efforts to secure multiple transformative gifts for Stanford’s cross-disciplinary initiatives in the life sciences. This includes significant 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, the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience and the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence.

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“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.”

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