2019 Alumni Medalist Rachel Hitchcock '06SPS
Channel: Columbia Alumni
Date: 16/10/2019

Rachel Hitchcock ’06SPS is the senior director of principal gifts at Johns Hopkins University.  She has more than 15 years development experience, including work in annual giving, corporate and foundation relations, and campaign management, as well as frontline fundraising. Hitchcock began her career in public relations. Hitchcock earned a master's degree in strategic communications from Columbia’s School of Professional Studies (SPS) in 2006 and her bachelors in public relations and Spanish from Syracuse University. A four-year scholarship student-athlete as an undergraduate, Hitchcock was a field hockey team captain her senior year at Syracuse. Hitchcock proudly served two consecutive terms on the CAA Board as the first representative from SPS. She has volunteered on the planning committee for Columbia Alumni Leaders Weekend (CALW) since 2014 and participated in panel discussions as a moderator or speaker in several CALW programs.

In 2018, she was elected to the board of Columbia DC, Columbia’s alumni club in Washington, D.C.  She serves as an alumni leader for the Baltimore-area alumni and re-initiated contact with the local Baltimore alumni representatives of the other Ivy League schools. Hitchcock is partnering with the CAA and SPS to develop the plan for the newly-reestablished SPS Alumni Association, for which Hitchcock will be the association’s first president. She was previously vice president of the Portland Columbia University Alumni Club from 2012-2017, developing new programming for the Portland area alumni. She was an active participant of the West Coast Columbia Alumni Leader Retreat in 2016. She is an avid runner, having completed 11 marathons including the Boston Marathon in 2011, and now lives in Baltimore with her wife and two sons.