The Institution
The nation’s largest liberal arts college for women and for more than 135 years a training ground for barrier-breaking women.

The Challenge
Recruit a new vice president for advancement who could hit the ground running.

The Inside Story
Smith President Carol T. Christ championed the continued growth of Smith’s undergraduate engineering science program. A linchpin of this effort was to be a $65 million facility to house the engineering program, together with the departments of computer science, chemistry, and molecular biology. To bring this vision to reality, Smith needed a highly skilled vice president for advancement, fast.

The Search
Within three months of the onset of the search, Smith selected as its new vice president for advancement Patricia “Trish” Jackson, then associate vice president for individual and organizational giving at Dartmouth College, from the Leodas Search Group’s slate of candidates.

The Hire
Trish Jackson was the ideal candidate for the Smith position. Not only did she have 22 years of experience in institutional advancement, but she had worked nearly exclusively at liberal arts colleges, including Smith’s illustrious neighbor in women’s education, Mount Holyoke College, and Wheaton College, which was a women’s institution for most of its history. Jackson was both a graduate and a trustee of a women’s college and a former vice president for education at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in Washington, DC. During her time at Dartmouth, Jackson had restructured aspects of the development organization and held key administrative responsibilities, overseeing a staff of 90 in a variety of functional areas. Moreover, she had compelling reasons to relocate to the Five Colleges area of western Massachusetts. In short, Trish Jackson had the precise mix of qualifications, experience, and passion that Smith was seeking.