The Vice-Chancellor, Professor E. Nigel Harris, has announced the appointment of Ms Minna Israel, Chair of the Board and Distinguished Business Fellow of the UWI Mona School of Business and Management, as Special Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor on Resource Development. 
 
 
Ms Israel, who has had a distinguished career in the financial sector both in Jamaica and regionally, will operate out of the Vice-Chancellery.  She is expected to oversee the three-pronged institutional advancement functions of fund-raising, alumni relations and marketing & communications, working with the teams engaged in those functions at the UWI Regional Headquarters and in the campuses.
 
The UWI has for several years been grappling with the need to diversify its financial resource base and decrease its dependence on government contributions. Accordingly, increased efforts have been focussed on enhancing fund-raising, including through its extensive network of alumni, raising the profile of the institution internationally and making strategic linkages with donor agencies and research institutions. One imperative to make such efforts both successful and sustainable is to coordinate the initiatives by the several arms of a complex institution such as The University of the West Indies.
 
 
Ms Israel’s primary responsibility will therefore be to coordinate the actions of the campus teams, the endowment foundations, alumni associations and supportive foundations based in the USA, Canada and the UK as well as to advise the Vice-Chancellor and the Executive Management team on matters related to resource development. Her appointment, which took effect on September 2, 2013, is for two years in the first instance.