Speakers

Carol Moreland, President, InterAction, Inc.
Carol Morleand is a seasoned training and development professional with over 25 years of diverse experience with major corporations, government, non-profit agencies, and educational institutions. Her focus is on improving performance through effective communication. She has personally trained over 5,000 people in such areas as relationship building, customer focused sales, performance management, team building and public speaking.

Her training and consulting experience spans a variety of client organizations including health care, social services, colleges and universities, banking and financial services, insurance, printing/publishing, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals.

Over the past 15 years Carol has delivered the Relationship Building Workshop,™ a program designed for major and planned giving officers. Participants in the workshop learn how to read and adapt to the behavior of donors, and use a donor-focused system to plan and conduct meetings, and to cultivate long-term relationships.

Carol is a frequent speaker at association meetings and workshops held for fund raising professionals, sales, banking, health care, insurance, and telecommunications, where she speaks about behavior styles, the power of listening and nonverbal communication.

Robert Sharpe, Jr., President, The Sharpe Group
Robert Sharpe, Jr. is president of The Sharpe Group. He has over 25 years of nonprofit fund development and consulting experience. He has helped hundreds of leading nonprofit organizations and institutions plan, develop, and implement successful major gift planning and endowment development efforts.

An honors graduate of Vanderbilt University and Cornell Law School, Robert formerly practiced law with a major firm specializing in income, gift, and estate taxation. Prior to his legal experience, he served as a development officer for a liberal arts college.

He has written numerous articles on a variety of gift planning topics. His remarks on charitable giving have been featured in leading publications and media including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, Smart Money, Market Watch, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Trusts & Estates, Kiplinger’s, and other national media.

Robert is a member of the editorial board of Trusts & Estates magazine. He also serves as a board member of the GIVING USA Foundation and is a member of the bequest methodology committee of GIVING USA. He is co-author of the Model Standards of Gift Valuation adopted by the Partnership for Philanthropic Planning and served on the PPP Strategic Directions Task Force.

William Sturtevant, Vice President for Principal Gifts, University of Illinois Foundation
Bill Sturtevant is Vice President for Principal Gifts at the University of Illinois Foundation, a position which guides relationships with individuals and families capable of gifts at a level of $5 million and above. For the past 25 years he served as Vice President for Planned Giving and Trust Relations at the University of Illinois Foundation. During his years at Illinois, he has been directly involved with over $450 million in major gifts.

He is a nationally recognized specialist in major and deferred gifts and planning and solicitation strategies. He earned the Certified Financial Planner designation in 1984 and regularly assists a variety of charitable organizations with complicated or unusual gift situations. He has been listed in "Who's Who," and in 1995 he was honored as Planned Giving Professional of the Year by "Planned Giving Today."

His seminars and presentations are extremely popular and he is a frequent speaker before development professionals, hospital groups and civic organizations. He is author of the best selling book "The Artful Journey: Cultivating and Soliciting the Major Gift" which was published in 1997 and revised and expanded in 2004.