James Allan

Office of the Vice-President, Advancement: Directory / Website

Dr. James Allan began his term as vice-president (advancement) on January 31, 2022. The vice-president (advancement) is the senior officer of the university responsible for leading, enhancing and developing community support and engagement across the University to deliver on the vision laid out in the Framework for Growth. Working collaboratively across the University, the vice-president (advancement) promotes and articulates the university’s value to society; attracts philanthropic support; develops programs and opportunities to engage alumni and the community at large and advances the university’s brand and connection through social media, digital engagement, strategic communications, and traditional marketing initiatives.

A highly experienced leader with over 15 years of experience in development and alumni relations, Dr. Allan formerly worked as director of Alumni and Donor Relations at the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia. He is responsible for the strategic development and implementation of a comprehensive and pro-active engagement program for Melbourne’s 420,000+ alumni and 27,000+ donors and played an integral part in the university’s $1B philanthropic and engagement campaign, Believe.

Throughout his career Dr. Allan has worked to foster productive, meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships between universities and their communities. At York University in Toronto, he led a significant renewal of alumni relations activities, including: the creation of the York Circle outreach program to provide community members with access to ideas and research generated by the university community, working with a remarkable group of leadership volunteers, and growing their international alumni engagement activities. At the University of Melbourne, Dr. Allan was the driving force behind the alumni engagement aspects of Believe, which was the first university campaign in Australia to set an alumni engagement goal alongside its philanthropic goal and has successfully engaged over 100,000 alumni in the life of the university so far. At the same time, he oversaw the dramatic expansion of the University’s student-alumni mentoring programs to create the largest mentoring system at any university in Australia, with over 10,000 students and alumni participating.

Dr. Allan holds a PhD from the University of Massachusetts in Communications, a M.A. in Communications from McGill University and completed his B.A. in English and History at the University of Toronto.