Title: Director of Development
Workplace: Exceptional Care for Children
Age: 33
At Exceptional Care for Children, Kyle Conner’s main priority is to ensure life-changing care for some of Delaware’s most medically fragile children is available for generations to come. As the organization’s director of development, it’s up to Conner to maintain and cultivate donor relationships among individuals, corporations and foundations while also staying on top of grant opportunities.
Over the last four years, he’s led fundraising campaigns that have raised over $12.8 million for his employer to provide care for Exceptional Care’s patients and their families. In his current role, which he has held since April 2021, Conner oversees the fundraising budget, marketing efforts and maintains legal and ethical compliance while also managing and mentoring a development manager at the facility.
He has demonstrated his sales, partnership-building and marketing skills through previous management experience at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center where he managed a $4.5 million budget and expanded programs to reach over 100,000 students and families annually. Before that, he worked at Field Station: Dinosaurs and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.
He holds multiple professional certifications, attended Rutgers Institute for Ethical Leadership’s Victoria Emerging Leaders Program in 2020 and graduated from Centenary University with a bachelor’s in theater arts. When Conner was still in grade school, he also worked on and off stage at the Three Little Bakers Dinner Theatre in Wilmington between the ages of 8 and 16. He also worked on a cyberbullying and digital dating abuse campaign for MTV as a teen with the late film director Joel Schumacher who notably directed “Batman Forever”(1995), “Batman & Robin”(1997), and “Phone Booth” (2002).
