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Carol O'Brien

Carol O'Brien is the founder and president of Carol O'Brien Associates, Inc., a development consulting firm located in Durham, North Carolina.

Carol O'Brien Associates, Inc. provides counsel in institutional advancement to colleges and universities, arts and cultural organizations, independent schools, research institutes, and healthcare institutions. To date, the firm has helped its clients raise over $17 billion. Some of the company's clients include Bowdoin College, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, Lawrenceville School, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, New York Philharmonic, New York-Presbyterian Hospital & Weill Medical College of Cornell University, North Carolina State University, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Swarthmore College, and The University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to establishing the company in 1986, Carol served as Director of University Development for Cornell University, building the strategy and resources for the University's $1.5 billion campaign. During her tenure, the University rose from 8th to 3rd place in the national rankings of private support to higher education and Cornell's annual gift support grew from $50 to $150 million in 1986.

Carol O'Brien graduated from Cornell with majors in English and art history and completed graduate courses in business, law, human resource management and the Executive Development Program of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell. She is active in professional associations, such as CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education), serving on the CASE Industry Advisory Council, AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals). She has spoken at professional conferences, including the Ivy-MIT-Stanford Development Conference, Boston's Women in Development, CASE Institutes and Assemblies (awarded the Faculty Star Award several times), MaGiC (National major gifts conference), The North Carolina Symposium for Fundraisers, the North Carolina Independent College and Universities and BRIDGES, the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill program for academic leadership. Carol has written articles for CASE Currents, the CASE handbook Developing an Effective Major Gift Program: From Managing Staff to Soliciting Gifts, the Jossey-Bass book Reprising Timeless Topics and the Stevenson, Inc. book Courting the Wealthy: 101 Ways to Cultivate Major Donors. She is a frequent resource for philanthropic media (The Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle of Philanthropy, CASE Currents and The Philanthropy Journal). She taught in the Duke University Program in Nonprofit Management.

Carol received the Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award and the Gaines Medal for community service. She serves on the board of the Friends of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and as a Museum Fellow of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

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This page last updated on 09/03/2009