Cynthia McKee serves as Executive Vice President for Institutional Advancement at the Aspen Institute. In this role, she leads fundraising and donor relations through oversight of the Office of Institutional Advancement, which includes principal, major, and planned gift fundraising; corporate and foundation relations; annual giving and membership programming through the Society of Fellows; major events; and Advancement Communications. She also serves as a strategic partner to programs across the Institute in supporting program-led and program-specific fundraising and partnerships.
Cynthia has extensive experience in fundraising, campaign strategy and execution and donor development. She previously served as Senior Vice President for Development at the global nonprofit organization Conservation International where she worked directly with CI’s Board of Directors, CEO, and senior leadership to ensure the organization’s high impact conservation goals were securely funded. She led CI’s highly successful $1.1 billion People Need Nature campaign which concluded in 2020.
Before joining CI in January 2011, Cynthia was the Director of Development and Marketing for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), where she was responsible for developing the organization’s fundraising and marketing strategy and leading efforts to secure private sector gifts to leverage multi-million dollar public funds.
Previous to NFWF, Cynthia worked with the board and high net worth individuals at Special Olympics, and before that, she was Director of Principal Gifts at The Nature Conservancy where she launched their principal gifts program to bolster its US $1.4 billion Campaign for Conservation. Cynthia has also served in the major gifts departments at World Wildlife Fund and the Pan American Development Foundation at the Organization of American States. She began her career as a political fundraiser.