Bennington College is pleased to announce the placement of Brad Porter as Managing Director of Donor Relations and Advancement Communications. Brad enters this role with over a decade of advancement communications experience in a university setting and most recently worked at Temple University as the Senior Director of Advancement Communications. His previous roles include Associate Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications at Temple University; Development Communications Coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine and Health System; and Donor Relations and Development Communications Extern at Carnegie Mellon University, his alma mater.

As Managing Director of Donor Relations and Advancement Communications, Brad will serve in a critical leadership role within the Vice President of Institutional Advancement Matt Rizzo’s cabinet. Brad will have overall responsibility for a comprehensive and integrated communications and donor relations team, supporting the entire Advancement office toward achieving audacious goals that align with Bennington’s ethos of innovation and renewal. He will design and implement a comprehensive marketing strategy specific to leadership donors in advance of a future campaign launch, playing a central role in organizing key campaign events, including the campaign launch and celebration.

Founded in 1932, Bennington holds a distinguished place among American colleges and universities as the first to include the visual and performing arts in a liberal arts education. The College is situated on 440 breathtaking acres in Bennington, Vermont, and currently enrolls 801 students (704 undergraduate and 97 graduate), offering an enviable student to faculty ratio of 10:1. Rooted in an abiding faith in the talent, imagination, and responsibility of the individual, Bennington invites students to pursue and shape their own intellectual inquiries, and in doing so to discover the interconnection of things. To support this rich journey, the College requires that students spend a term—every year—at work in the world. Bennington’s unique innovations in curricula continuously challenge yet sustain its students (and faculty) to graduate small classes of tested students, regardless of chosen field, notably confident in their capacity to engage and succeed in the world in a manner advanced and distinct among peers.