Linda G. Steckley, the associate dean for external relations at Duke University Law School, will join the Brookings Institution in June as vice president of development, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today.
Steckley will coordinate all of Brookings’s fundraising, including major gifts and planned gifts to the endowment, general operating support, and funding for specific research programs. Brookings raised upwards of $19 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2002, and has an endowment of more than $180 million. The Office of Development also acts as liaison to the Brookings Board of Trustees, chaired by James A. Johnson.
“I’m personally delighted that Linda Steckley is joining Brookings,” Talbott said. “She brings wide experience in the field of institutional development and an appreciation of Brookings’s commitment to independent, nonpartisan, public policy research. We’re fortunate to have someone of Linda’s energy for the important tasks ahead. She has great enthusiasm for the institution, its scholars, and its mission.”
Steckley has been at Duke’s law school since 1995. She oversaw fundraising, alumni relations, communications, marketing, and strategic planning for a $55-million campaign that has generated more than $60 million in commitments to date.
Steckley served from 1992 to 1995 as assistant dean for development and alumni relations at New York University School of Law. Before that, she spent ten years at the University of Miami in a variety of development and alumni relations positions.
“My eight years at Duke have been wonderfully rewarding. The opportunity at Brookings is about the only thing that could have attracted me away,” Steckley said. “I have enormous respect for the work being done at Brookings, and I’m convinced that quality research aimed at improving public policy is more important than ever. Working with distinguished scholars and helping develop support for their research has been one of the great pleasures of my career.”
Steckley grew up outside of Philadelphia, graduated from Dickinson College, and earned an MBA at the University of Miami. She is married to Pete Weitzel, former managing editor of The Miami Herald, who plans to fulfill his teaching commitments at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and at Duke Law School through the coming academic year and to continue as director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, working with students from Duke, UNC, and North Carolina Central University law schools. The couple has five grown sons, three from his previous marriage and two from hers.