Join Emcees Jason Champion & Shanna Adamic and OneCause CEO, Steve Johns, for a fun, heartwarming, and one-of-a-kind Raise 2023 conference close out.
We’ll also announce the live Raise Raffle, where lucky winners take home fabulous prizes. Winners must be present!
Speakers
Jason Champion
Vice President of Business Development, Winspire
Jason Champion is the Vice President of Business Development at Winspire, a renowned global provider of high-end experiences for charity auctions and fundraising initiatives. As the company’s branding leader, he is entrusted with shaping the future corporate brand vision. Jason plays a pivotal role in enhancing performance through innovative product and service development, strategic brand planning and positioning, multifaceted marketing across various platforms, effective communication strategies, creative endeavors, ensuring customer satisfaction, and driving the growth of the business.
Shanna Adamic
Executive Director & Raise Emcee, Oracle Health Foundation
Shanna Adamic is Executive Director for the Oracle Health Foundation, a global leader in healthcare technology. She also serves as Executive Director of Cerner Charitable Foundation, passionately advocating for equitable access to healthcare for children and reducing disparities in communities around the world.
As a rare brain tumor survivor, Shanna remains committed to Cerner’s purpose of helping health happen. Her training as a former NFL cheerleader is core to her competitive, bold and optimistic personality. She is a powerful, passionate speaker delivering messages of empowerment and hope to fellow philanthropy professionals.
Kelly Velasquez-Hague
VP of Marketing, OneCause
Kelly brings more than 20 years of fundraising, nonprofit management, and sales/marketing experience to her role at OneCause. As VP of Marketing, Kelly manages all of the company’s content strategy and execution. She’s passionate about empowering great missions and loves that her current role allows her to continue to help nonprofits reach new donors and raise more funds.
Ashley Drew
National Director of Special Events & Field Development, Pet Partners
Ash Drew is the National Director of Special Events and Field Development at Pet Partners. She is an accomplished nonprofit professional with more than 17 years of experience yielding high revenue in the nonprofit sector, along with executing nationwide signature events, conferences, galas, and fundraisers. She honed her fundraising expertise at health-related nonprofit organizations such as JDRF and the American Liver Foundation.
Ash’s ability to build relationships with donors, supporters, and volunteers has helped nonprofits transform their vision and purpose into fundraising success. Her true passion is inspiring others to be fearless fundraisers and share their love for an organization’s mission with their communities. Ash is also a Finalist for Raise Award 2023 Fundraiser of the Year.
Emily Newberry
VP, National Accounts, OneCause
Emily Newberry is sales and strategy leader in the nonprofit SaaS world. She’s passionate about technology and the impact it has on people, organizations and communities.
At OneCause, Emily works directly with national nonprofit organizations and their leaders to understand challenges and opportunities and collaborate on ways to engage donors and use technology to meet fundraising and stewardship goals. She works cross functionally with internal leaders in marketing, product, and operations to ensure we build process and product for today and tomorrow’s opportunities.
Prior to joining OneCause, Emily worked in the nonprofit space, helping align donors to mission, and raising money for life-saving research, treatment and care, and monitoring grant spending and care at two multi-disciplinary health clinics.
Bree Pelczar
VP of Philanthropic Events & Engagement, Connecticut Children's Foundation
Bree Pelczar understands the connection between strong leadership, engaged teams and inspired volunteers. She has eleven years of experience working in development, donor engagement and philanthropic events at well-respected institutions such Connecticut Public Television & Radio, United Way and Connecticut Children’s Foundation, and ten years of experience working at a nationally syndicated talk show in New York City. These diverse opportunities enabled her to sharpen her ability to create unique experiences that generate attention and move diverse audiences from awareness to engagement.
Currently Bree serves as the Vice President of Philanthropic Events & Engagement at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center Foundation. During her six-year tenure, she has increased philanthropic event revenue by 85%, led a Gala, which raises more than $1 million annually and earned the title of “Best Charity Event” by Hartford Magazine Readers in 2020 and 2021 and created and launched a new donor engagement group, Connecticut Children’s Connection, which experienced a 169% increase in membership growth from 2021 to 2022.
Bree graduated from Marist College with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communications.
Mike Wilkinson
Deputy Director of Events, Human Rights Campaign
Mike Wilkinson is currently the Deputy Director of Events at the Human Rights Campaign where he works with a team of event fundraising professionals to produce 30 signature fundraising dinners nationwide. He previously worked for health-related non-profit organizations including the National Kidney Foundation and The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Mike has worked extensively on creating innovations for on-site fundraising, ticket sales and registration, live and silent auctions and on-stage appeals. Mike and his colleagues at HRC have perfected the live appeal as well as overall event design to maximize the attendee experience in a way that drives revenue results. When he’s not traveling the country for events, Mike is a fitness enthusiast that teaches five workout classes per week.