Senior Appointment (April 28, 2021)

To the Bowdoin community,

I am very pleased to announce that Stephanie B. Frost will succeed Scott Meiklejohn as our senior vice president for development and alumni relations.

Stephanie will join us this summer and, as previously announced, Scott will then transition to his new role as senior advisor at the College. Stephanie’s appointment follows a national search that produced a diverse pool of highly qualified and impressive candidates for this critical position. Her record of achievement at Stanford—and before that at Fairfield University and at Yale University—set Stephanie apart, as does her success in engaging alumni across generations in the life of the institutions where she has worked.

At Bowdoin, Stephanie will lead one of the most accomplished development and alumni relations teams in the country and will serve as a member of the College’s senior leadership group. She will play a critical role in bringing our $500 million From Here comprehensive campaign to a successful conclusion, and she will work with me, the staff, and many of you to build even stronger ties to our nearly 23,000 alumni.

Stephanie recently completed seven years as the associate dean for external relations at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). She directed the planning effort behind the school’s next ambitious campaign, achieved record participation in annual giving among MBA alumni, and led strategies for development that resulted in raising $70–$100 million annually in principal, major, and annual gifts.

She also launched the school’s first branded planned giving program. She recruited and led more than fifty staff members and worked with hundreds of leadership volunteers in all development and alumni relations areas for the school and its more than 30,000 alumni. Finally, she successfully initiated and advanced inclusive programming to support and engage underrepresented and underserved GSB alumni communities.

From 2006 until 2013, Stephanie served as vice president for university advancement and was the first female vice president at Fairfield University, a seventy-eight-year-old Jesuit university in Fairfield, Connecticut, with an alumni body of more than 40,000. While at Fairfield, she built and developed principal, major gift, planned giving, and annual fund teams, designed and launched the first alumni-led campaign in the university’s history, and managed a staff of fifty. And, from 1990 to 1998 and from 2002 to 2006, Stephanie held a number of key advancement leadership positions at Yale University, including director of major gifts and director of parent giving and special gifts. A native of New Jersey, she is a graduate of Rutgers University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in theater arts and women’s studies, and she holds a master’s degree in women’s history from Sarah Lawrence College. Her other related experience includes development work in New York City at The Metropolitan Opera and The Churchill School and Center, among others.

I am grateful for the time and care our search committee put into this effort, and for the assistance and insights of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and trustees who interviewed our finalists. 

I am excited about the work that Stephanie will do at Bowdoin, and I know you join me in welcoming her to the College.

All the best, 

Clayton