Monday Plenary

We're thrilled to welcome Tijana Tamburic as our opening plenary speaker for day 1 of Fundraising Convention.

Tijana Tamburic is co-founder of London-based creative agency Female Narratives. The agency works with a collective of over 100 female and non-binary freelancers to tell real stories for brands. Their clients include Bumble, Allbirds, The North Face, Merrell, Kiehl’s and many female-founded b-corps. 

Above all, Tijana is a storyteller. She tells stories across different mediums and in innovative ways. She was Forbes 30 Under 30 2019 and a judge in 2020, her TEDx Talk ‘When My Masculine Met My Feminine’ has over 40,000 views and her opinion pieces, articles and podcasts are widely read and listened to. 

Follow her on Instagram or Linked In 

Tuesday Plenary 

We're excited to announce that Birgit Smith Burton will be our opening plenary speaker for day 2 of Fundraising Convention.

Birgit Smith Burton is the Executive Director of the African American Development Officers Network, which she founded at Georgia Tech in 1999 to provide professional development, education, employment support, mentorship, and networking opportunities for fundraisers of color. She is a well-regarded speaker on the topics of fundraising and diversity and has authored articles on diversity in the fundraising profession and tells her personal story in the book Collecting Courage, which shares the lived experiences of Black women and men working in the nonprofit and charitable space (published fall 2020). During her 26-year career at Georgia Tech she led her team in raising over $500M from private philanthropic foundations to support programs, scholarships, and capital projects. 

Birgit serves on the board of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) and has the distinction of being the first African American woman in AFP’s 62-year history to be voted chair of the AFP Global Board. In 2020 the R.I.S.E. Fund was established in Birgit’s honor with a mission to advance women of color in fundraising by providing Resources, Inspiration, Support, and Education.

Birgit holds a bachelor's degree in media communications from Medaille University in Buffalo, New York.