Ilyssa Frey

Ilyssa Greene Frey has more than 20 years of experience in education, non-profit and corporate communications. Since 2015, she has worked at the Wellesley College Alumnae Association (WCAA) as director of communications and marketing, where she leads communications strategy for Wellesley’s 35,000 alumnae. She is responsible for digital and print communications for WCAA programs such as Reunion, the Alumnae Achievement Awards, and Alumnae Leadership Council, and works with multiple departments across campus on technology integration and special events. Ilyssa was previously director of community engagement at the Meadowbrook School of Weston, an independent K-8 school. During her five years at Meadowbrook, she oversaw digital communications and parent relations, launched two websites, and produced a weekly e-newsletter. Prior to that, she provided contract web development and communications services to other independent schools and non-profits.

Ilyssa began her career in high technology public relations on both the agency and corporate sides, managing PR and communications for software companies such as Ovid Technologies, RoweCom and Brixton Systems. She has served on the board of trustees at Summit Montessori School and presented at North East Alumni Relations (NEAR) and National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conferences.

Ilyssa has an M.S. in communications from Boston University and a B.A. cum laude in art history from Tufts University. Follow her on Twitter @Tufts91, or find her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ilyssa-greene-frey.

Karen Hook
Karen Hook is currently the Donor Database Implementation Project Manager for University Relations at Wesleyan University.   In this capacity, Karen is steering the twenty-five-member team through the conversion process from Millennium to Affinaquest with a targeted go-live of summer, 2018.

Having been at Wesleyan for nineteen years, Karen was formerly the technical point person in the financial aid and student account areas.  Most recently she was the project lead from RFP through conversion for Wesleyan’s student billing system.

Jane Jyakka
Jane Jylkka is a Project Leader in ITS at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT.  As project leader in Administrative Systems, Jane heads a three-member team that provides software support to University Relations, Events and Scheduling, and Communications.  Jane began her time at Wesleyan in August, 1997.

Prior to working in Higher Ed, Jane worked in the Student Loan Industry. Jane holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Jean Kilbride
Jean Kilbride is charged with leading, maintaining, securing, enhancing and strategically advancing the direction of campus information technology at Connecticut College.  She oversees enterprise application systems, web development, campus network, information security, computer support, servers and storage, unified communications as well as the College’s IT Service Desk.  Over the past 35 years Jean has attained extensive experience in developing business-aligned technology strategies, delivering technological change and building high performance IT organizations both in higher education and in the private sector. She joined Connecticut College in 2011 as the Assistant Vice President of Enterprise and Technical Systems.  She is a certified IT service manager (ITIL) with a Bachelor of Science degree from University of New Hampshire and a Master of Business Administration from New Hampshire College.

Amy Michelson

Amy Michelson is currently the Director of Fundraising Analytics at Wellesley College. Amy provides leadership for analytics and strategy in support of the fundraising division of Wellesley. Working closely with Office for Resources leadership, she supports the development and execution of direct marketing fundraising strategies, analyzes trends and develops forecasts.  She is also the lead technical support for Principal and Leadership Gift prospect management.  Amy joined Wellesley College Office for Resources in November 1999 and holds an MA in Geography from Boston University, an MS in Marine Environmental Science from Stony Brook University, and a BA in Science Technology & Society/Chemistry from Clark University.

Ravi Ravishanker
Ravi is currently the CIO at Wellesley College and is responsible for leading the Library & Technology Services. He began this assignment on Nov 15, 2010. Ravi is currently leading the transition to Workday at the College and has managed several major technology transitions such as Sakai, Google Apps for Education and Kaltura and implement an institutional repository, web-scale discovery as well as several key digitization projects in the Library. Ravi was the Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Pace University in New York from August 2009 till Nov 2010. In this role, he was responsible for coordinating and supporting all the IT needs of the University. Ravi was responsible for transforming the IT at Pace to be a highly service oriented organization that also began serious engagement in academic support. He led many of the key institution-wide projects such as Electronic Portfolio, the iStrategy Data Warehouse implementation, and research and choice of Drupal as the new Web Content Management System. Prior to coming to Pace, he worked at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT from since 1986 till 2009 in various capacities and was the Director of Technology Support Services before becoming the Associate VP June 2006. Ravi has managed several major technology implementations at Wesleyan and co-directed the Electronic Portfolio project at Wesleyan. He is the author of several major software such as the Electronic Portfolio core, several underlying E-portfolio applications, Wesleyan Events Calendar, and the Classifieds system. In his CIO role at Wesleyan, he was leading the organizational efforts in implementing a new web content management system, the establishment of a New Media Lab to co-manage the University web efforts with University Communications, Green Computing and Virtualization efforts. Ravi received his MSc in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1978. He completed his PhD in computational chemistry from Hunter College and MA in Computer Science from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1986.

Mark Romanovsky

Mark Romanovsky is a Senior Programmer/Analyst at Vassar College.  He most recently lead the discovery and implementation project for iPaaS at Vassar.  He has played a key role in developing and deploying integration systems that maintain data between Enterprises Systems supported by the College. Mark has worked very closely with the College’s Advancement Office over the years to support their evolving workflows and business needs .  This work has included data warehouse/data store architecture, building and managing agile data integration systems for multiple SaaS implementations, and supporting data analysis within the organization    He hopes his most recent experiences will help smoothly guide the upcoming data and application integration projects as Vassar moves to a next generation CRM platform for Advancement
Mark Romanovsky received a bachelors degree from Marist College in Information Technology

Mary Carole Starke

Mary Carole Starke is the Associate Vice President for Operations at Vassar College.  She manages a team of 14 responsible for biographical and gift recording, reporting, analytics, prospect development and research and prospect management, and budgeting, as well as collaborating with her colleagues at the senior level on technology and support needs. With 25+ years experience in advancement services in higher education she has implemented an online community, a digital imaging system and manages the departments fundraising software.  She works closely with the College's information technology team to ensure data security and compliance and is a member of the college-wide data governance team.  She is a member of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and a member of the Association of Advancement Services Professionals.  She also works as an independent consultant for Grenzebach Glier and Associates.
Mary Carole received a bachelors degree from Elmira College and a master's degree from the University of Maryland.
 

Vicki Tambellini
Vicki Tambellini is President and CEO of The Tambellini Group, the world’s leading market research and advisory firm for higher education. The firm, which she founded in 2001, delivers unbiased quantitative and qualitative technology research, insight, and analysis—specifically for higher education. Ms Tambellini has more than 30 years of experience as an award-winning software company executive, author, blogger, consultant, guest-speaker, and entrepreneur. She has received numerous awards and honors from companies including PeopleSoft, Oracle, NCR, and the Elearning! Institute in recognition of her contributions to higher education.

Deb Treister
Deborah Treister - Director of Strategic Planning and Administration for University Relations

Deb has been at Wesleyan for 19 years and is responsible for facilitating all aspects of advancement services support including strategic planning for the overall business operations, budget planning, staffing, systems and best practices.  She oversees all aspects of the donor database, managing a team responsible for the accurate reporting, recording and processing of all financial and biographical data, and the overall technical strategies and needs of the division.

Rainer Weissenberger
Rainer Weissenberger leads advancement’s research and prospect management team at Connecticut College which identifies major gift prospects, potential Trustees, and notable alumni and parents, and supports the major gifts team in moving its prospects through the development cycle by collaboratively documenting strategy and plans. His team also supports Presidential travel, Annual Fund and Reunion programs, and other initiatives within College Advancement as well as the ongoing annual demands of other college program areas including Admissions and the Committee on Trustees.

He came to Connecticut College in 2016 from The Florida State University Foundation where he helped implement a successful prospect management program, supervised the Research team, and served on the core implementation team during FSU’s advancement database migration from The Raiser’s Edge to Blackbaud CRM in midst a capital campaign.

Rainer has an M.A. in Arts Administration (Florida State University) and Musicology (University of Iowa) and a B.A. in Music and German (Illinois College).