Meet the staff of the Friends of Alec Annual Giving Program. Most are callers who spend their evenings on the phone with alumni and friends of the Cockrell School of Engineering. In addition to securing pledges and gifts for the School, the callers provide up-to-date information on the state of the college as well as information on how to contact people within the University.
Friends of Alec offers leadership opportunities to exceptional callers. Each year, ten callers are selected to be Crewleaders and Student Managers. The Crewleaders help each night's callers complete necessary paperwork and assist the Manager. The Managers participate in planning, training, recruiting and interviewing callers, and nightly supervision of the calling staff. The experience they gain in management, goal setting (and achieving), leadership, responsibility, working as a team and general office procedures is invaluable later in life. After finishing a very successful interview for a permanent job, one of our former SMT Leaders remarked that he was able to share an example from his experience in the Phonothon for every question the recruiter asked. The recruiter was impressed, and he was offered a job.
From Top Left: Director DJ Paine, Assistant Director Sarah Williams, Student Managers John Rossman and Kyle Jesse. From Bottom Left: Student Managers Nick Christensen, Elizabeth Medlin, Bo Yu, and Brittany Wisch
Behind the scenes at FOA
DJ Paine
Director, Friends of Alec
DJ Paine graduated from U.T. with a B.B.A. in Marketing. As Director, she handles most of the information related to the student callers and keeps the office running smoothly.
Sarah Williams
Assistant Director, Friends of Alec
Sarah Williams graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Psychology. When she was a student, Sarah was a Friends of Alec caller and student manager. As Assistant Director, she is now responsible for maintaining donor and alumni databases and tracking all pledges and gifts.
Contact Information
Friends of Alec
Cockrell School of Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station, C2104
Austin, TX 78712-0287
DJ Paine
Director, Friends of Alec
Phone: (512) 475-6792
Fax: (512) 471-3955
