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O'Neil Outar

O’Neil A.S. Outar joined RISD's leadership team in January 2018, bringing more than 20 years of fundraising and leadership experience from some of the world’s leading public and private research universities. He began his career at Tufts University, where he served as director of the Fund for Arts, Sciences and Engineering during the University’s $609 million “Tufts Tomorrow” campaign. From there, Outar held several ascending leadership roles at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leading the work that secured some of MIT’s largest-ever donations.

Following MIT, Outar held fundraising positions at the University of Alberta and Harvard University, where he led the $2.5 billion “Campaign for Arts and Sciences” campaign. Most recently he served as the interim vice chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Pittsburgh.

Currently a special adviser to The Guyana Foundation, Outar was a trustee on the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, a Commonwealth Study Conference Leader, a member of the Word Economic Forum’s Knowledge Advisory Group and an MIT Leader-to-Leader Fellow. A first-generation college student, he was born in New Amsterdam, Guyana and is named in honor of his father’s favorite Australian cricketer, Norman O'Neill.