Laura Hansen Dean is Senior Director – Gift Design and Documentation at the University of Texas at Austin. In past positions, she has served as Associate Vice President of Development at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, as Assistant Vice President of Development for the University of Colorado System, and for seven years as the Executive Director of Gift Planning at The University of Texas at Austin during the $3 billion fundraising campaign that concluded successfully in September 2014.
Laura is recognized as one of the most experienced and knowledgeable charitable gift planners in the country. For more than 30 years, she has assisted individuals and their advisors in considering and designing charitable giving plans as part of personal financial planning and estate planning.
A magna cum laude graduate of Indiana University School of Law, she has led gift-planning teams at public universities, community foundations and academic centers on philanthropy, has served as Chief Executive Officer of a regional community foundation and a state university-related foundation and as consultant for multi-year grants funded by some of the country’s largest private foundations.
She has served the charitable gift planning field in leadership positions with local planned giving councils and estate planning councils, and on the board of directors (1991-1993, 2012-2014) and committees of the National Committee on Planned Giving, now the National Association of Charitable Gift Planners. She served on the editorial review committee of the Journal of Gift Planning during its years of publication. She is a frequent speaker and teacher and contributor to publications on philanthropy.
