Joan Bentley Hoffman recognized for cross-team collaboration with Gates Award

Joan Bentley Hoffman, the Library’s Associate Director of Development, recently won a Frederick T. Gates Award for Outstanding Performance from University Alumni Relations and Development. Named for one of the University’s founders and its first fundraiser, the Gates Award recognizes staff whose work goes above and beyond their daily duties and has significant impact across development teams.  Applications cannot come from the nominee’s direct manager, and employees are encouraged to nominate colleagues outside their own team. As a result, the winners are individuals who not only exemplify superior achievement within their unit but also effectively collaborate with other development teams around the University. 

At the awards ceremony at the July 18 all-development staff meeting, a quote was read from Bentley Hoffman’s nomination: “Since Joan moved on to the Library, she has become a key collaborator for so many people across campus—engaging alumni and donors, working on gifts, giving tours of Mansueto, and always making herself available to clarify the sometimes confusing animal that the Library can be. Joan is also an alumna of the University and it shows in the careful thought that goes into how she communicates with alumni and donors. She does this with grace and a humility which sometimes disguises what a tenacious development officer she is.”