Catching Up with Andreh Khachaturians, CDU Executive Director for Development and Alumni Relations
Andreh, you’ re always brainstorming about new ways to raise money and further brand the University. So what’ s new with you now? I don’ t do my work in a silo. I have a strong team backing me and I want to credit them as well for all of the success we’ ve had in the last couple of years. This goes out to them as well. There’ s a lot going on, and we are so excited for a number of things brewing. And the recent President’ s Breakfast in February at the Colburn School in downtown LA was very successful.
In September of this year, we’ re bringing back Jazz at Drew which I’ m so excited about. This has been three years in the making. We shut it down because of a COVIDrelated hiatus. Jazz at Drew has long been recognized as an extraordinary gathering of musicians, artists, and enthusiasts who come to celebrate the power of jazz, the power of music. The event serves as a platform for fostering cultural diversity and promoting the University as a partner within our community.
This year’ s Jazz at Drew promises to be a really remarkable event. We’ re joining forces with community members, our donors, and other individuals and corporations. We are coming with a full line of entertainment to celebrate the music, but also to celebrate us being part of this community. So those are a couple of things that we’ re doing not only to elevate the fundraising but also elevate the university’ s image.
You have a Jazz at Drew committee. We do. It includes internal people in the Office of Strategic Advancement, SVP Angela Minniefield and a number of other team members. I’ ve grown to love jazz a lot. The last few years, I started with classic artists like Billie Holiday, Little Jimmy Scott; those folks, and now I’ ve really come to appreciate it.
So, is there anything else new that you want to share with us? We’ ve hired an Alumni Relations Manager, Marie Skidmore. And the reason why we did this is because of the four strategic pillars that we’ ve identified with within Alumni Relations. And these four strategic pillars are important to alumni engagement, our programming, creating affinity networks, and increasing the number of people on our Alumni Council, the leaders who want to have a say in what goes on. And of course, there’ s philanthropy. Those are the four pillars that we’ ve identified in alumni relations in order to increase engagement and increase communication with one of our most important assets, our alumni.
With whom are you collaborating to use your program initiatives to attract donors to campus? We are being very strategic in who we engage with. Internally within the CDU community, we engage with the deans, with program directors, faculty, and staff. Externally we engage with health systems, big corporations, small corporations, foundations, organizations and individuals. There’ s no limit to who we want to engage with, and those folks who want to engage with us. And because of all the wonderful things that are happening at CDU from our new medical degree program, our biomedical sciences program, to our RadTech program. Everybody wants to be part of a winning team. And that’ s where we come in.
The last time we talked, you were busy expanding outreach to CDU alums and you’ ve shared a little bit about it, but how’ s your progress so far? As I mentioned, we hired an additional person and the reason we did that is we needed someone to help do the programming to help implement all of the pillars. While I
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