Kristi Hettrick, BA

Kristi Hettrick is the Vice President for Institutional Advancement for Graceland University. Graduating from Graceland in 1996, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and in International Studies. Kristi worked in television sales and marketing for a decade before moving to non-profit management and philanthropy. She worked for Community of Christ church in communications and development, creating the “Jack and Jen” children’s series on generosity and the “Power of 10” campaign, and then served as the Director of Development for Harvesters—The Community Food Network, a Feeding America food bank. While there she led a team of professionals focused on corporate, foundation, and individual major gift strategies as well as special event fundraising. She worked to develop annual and multi-year strategic fundraising campaigns targeting $18M+ annually to support feeding families in 26 counties in Missouri and Kansas as well as multiple capital campaigns. She served on the national Feeding America Fundraising Capacity Institute board and was also awarded the Association for Fundraising Professionals team of the year in 2017. She was the Director of Development for The University of Kansas Health System until 2020, focused on individual major gift fundraising in support of cardiovascular medicine and the Center for Advanced Heart Care. While there she staffed volunteer funding councils and completed projects focused on elevating patient care.

At Graceland, she oversees strategic fundraising initiatives for both the Lamoni and Independence campuses and is responsible for raising sustaining gifts for the Graceland Fund, which helps meet the needs for day-to-day operations of the university. She also works with individual donors to help generate revenue for scholarships, capital improvements, and faculty and program support. While in school at Graceland, Kristi was a member of Shalom House and then served as the first house president of Khiyah House, a position she held for two years. She has two children currently attending Graceland: Casey Main ’22, past House President of Shalom House and who is now the Graceland Student Government President and Jackson Main ’24, who is on the Academic Student Council and is an Esports team member on Tiona House.