Ann Jones-Weinstock of Middlebury, with over 20 years of high-level fund-raising experience, has been named Saint Michael's College Director of Development. She started at the liberal arts Catholic college of Burlington, Vermont, on July 2.
Most recently, Ms. Jones-Weinstock was Director of Community Initiatives for NRG Systems (2007 to 2012), and before that she was Vice President for Institutional Advancement for the Middlebury College Monterey Institute of International Studies (2004-2007).
“I was struck by the way graduates and employees of St Michael's College speak of the authentic community of this college,” Ms. Jones-Weinstock said. “I’m happy to be part of this strong community… Saint Michael’s is in the middle of vital educational work [for social justice] teaching students to pay attention to what truly matters,” she said.
“Today’s world needs students more than ever coming out of a strong values tradition, who are asking spiritual and moral questions,” she said. “I don’t know how we’ll solve the pressing problems in the world today without such students.”
Ms. Jones-Weinstock earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Middlebury College, with highest departmental honors (1979), and her master’s degree in mass communications from Boston University (1984).
Her work experience, before NRG Systems and Middlebury, includes VP for Donor Relations and Communications for the Vermont Community Foundation (2001-2004); Director of Principal Gifts for Middlebury College (1995-2001), various positions at Colby College (1990-1995), culminating in the job of Director of Major Gifts, and Wellesley College, Director of Area Campaigns (1989 to 1990).
Her additional professional experience includes work as a community worker in Appalachian poverty relief with Henderson Settlement in Frakes, Kentucky (1979-1981).
About her work in Kentucky, Ms. Jones-Weinstock wrote, “We were united, not by the details of our faith, but by our shared commitment to support people in great need and to work for social justice in those mountain communities and beyond—it was an extraordinary, life-changing experience for me.”
My principal goal, Ms. Jones-Weinstock said, is to “spend time with alumni, parents and friends, who care deeply about the future of Saint Michael's College and who want to make gifts to the college so that the work of the college continues.” She said she hopes to “come to understand the nature of community at Saint Michael’s, and why people care so very much about this place,” what their experience was like at this college.
“All philanthropy,” she said, “springs from that place of gratitude….It’s magnificent kind of work to sit with people who want to speak about the impact a teacher or a coach had on them 20 years earlier, to hear how that person changed their lives.”
Ms. Jones-Weinstock lives with her husband David Weinstock in Middlebury. They have two sons, Ben, a junior at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, and Dan, a high school senior.