Oberlin Appoints Maria Miller Associate Vice President for Leadership & Planned Giving

Maria Miller has been appointed associate vice president for leadership and planned giving following a national search. She begins on October 4, 2021, reporting to the vice president for advancement. 

The AVP directs a team of fundraisers and works collaboratively with colleagues across the college and conservatory to plan and implement strategies for the cultivation, stewardship, solicitation, and closure of significant gifts to Oberlin.

Miller has a passion for fundraising in higher education and is joining Oberlin after serving as the executive director for planned giving at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. In her role at Brandeis as the leader of the planned giving program, she was responsible for all marketing strategy to build and broaden the donor pipeline. She developed and conducted training for gifts officers on planned giving vehicles to better identify and engage prospects, and collaborated with gift officers to qualify, cultivate, and solicit their donors for planned gifts.

Prior to her time at Brandeis, she spent seven years in fundraising at The Ohio State University in the Office of Estate and Gift Planning and at the James Cancer Hospital. As the director of development in the Office of Estate and Gift Planning, she collaborated with gift officers to identify and track new prospects and identify philanthropic interests. As a major gift officer/director of development for planned giving at the James Cancer Hospital, she worked with physicians to manage and coordinate fundraising for the divisions of neuro-oncology, gastrointestinal oncology, and head and neck oncology. 

A former associate attorney for Slowik & Robinson, LLC in Columbus (immigration and employment law firm), as well as an executive chef, Miller earned a bachelor of arts in political science at Canisius College; pursued a Fulbright Fellowship studying at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where she received a bachelor of arts honours, public policy. She has a master of arts in political science from University of California, Berkeley, and earned a law degree at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.