A strategic communications professional with over 20 years of experience in higher education advancement, Laurel Ode-Schneider serves as Director of Proposal Services in the Development and Alumni Relations unit at the University of California, Davis. A co-founder of the national Advancement Strategic Communicators Network, she has focused her career on communicating the impact and relevance of public higher education, pursuing this work at two of the nation’s top-tier public research universities. 

Laurel holds a doctorate in English from the University at Buffalo, a flagship campus of the State University of New York system, where she served for more than 15 years in the Office of the President, most recently as director of presidential communications. In 2017, she joined the proposal services team of UC Davis’ Development and Alumni Relations division and was appointed as the team’s director in 2022. The philanthropic writing team that she leads at UC Davis has earned more than 10 CASE awards for excellence in fundraising communications in the past five years, including two national CASE Circle of Excellence awards.