Director of Development Appointed

Thacher’s new Director of Development, Brandon Doyle, arrives with eleven years of fundraising experience in higher education. He started his career at his alma mater Middlebury College where, as a member of the Annual Fund staff, he helped the College achieve its Bicentennial Campaign goals, working with young alumni and the phonathon. Brandon then moved for two years to New York City’s Columbia College, where he established the Class Agent Program. For the past seven years, Brandon worked in New York City as Director of Major Gifts for Cambridge in America promoting interest in and support for the University of Cambridge (UK) and its constituent Colleges among alumni and friends in the US. Recently, he worked closely with Cambridge alumni in Southern California through a successful 800th Anniversary Campaign with a goal of raising 1 billion pounds worldwide.

Brandon grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and has family ties to Vermont, where his grandfather raised Morgan horses. He is a classically trained French horn musician who played in a regional youth orchestra with the New England Conservatory and at the Aspen Music Festival in the summers. He was an outstanding scholar-athlete in soccer and lacrosse, and earned high school All-American honors as a lacrosse player. He went on to play on Eastern College Athletic Championship teams at Middlebury while captaining its lacrosse team in 1998. Brandon's fiancée, Dana Cesnik, has also moved west to become part of the Thacher community.

Brandon and Dana have taken up residence in the Los Padres neighborhood on the northeast edge of campus, just down from the McMahons’ home and just up from the DelVecchios’. Daisy, a half yellow lab-half mastiff puppy, has recently added “Doyle” to her name. (Must be in the water.)

Says Brandon: I am touched by the warm welcome we’ve experienced from the faculty and staff on campus. Everyone was helpful and accommodating as we settled in, waiting for our stuff to arrive this summer. One day, a loaf of bread was sitting on our doorstep and a peach cobbler in the fridge. The next day, a big pile of dirt was delivered to help us with our landscaping and gardening. We can’t get enough of the fresh citrus and avocados on campus—and we are obsessed with In-n-Out Burger.

(There are many ways to interpret "balance," we guess: oranges and a double-double, anyone?)