Reconnecting, re-engaging, and rekindling are the mission of Dietrich alumna
As a rising young executive in the nascent field of information management systems, Debbi Gillotti found herself very much in demand among managers whose computer literacy was, diplomatically speaking, not their sweet spot.
“Back in the mid-’80s, I remember people lining up outside my door asking for help,” says Gillotti
(A&S ’77), who was then working for GTE, a Connecticut-based telephone company in the heady early days of deregulation. “Anything I could do to make their lives easier, I tried.”
Fast-forward a few decades and substitute the Pitt Alumni Association for GTE, and Gillotti remains in high demand for her innovative ideas. As the chair of the association’s School, College and Regional Campus (SCR) Committee, Gillotti is charged with strengthening and coordinating the bonds between the association and all of Pitt’s institutional constituents. Toward that end, she has been instrumental in creating means for all the schools, colleges, and campuses that comprise the greater identity of Pitt to communicate. A simple monthly reporting form developed with the committee allows representatives to quickly summarize key activities that might be of interest to the larger association, allowing more time for discussion.
Gillotti has also shared best-practice ideas such as writing personal notes to donors: “Things like that can be brought to bear and allow us to share the good things we’re doing,” she notes.
As she views it, the committee’s focus in 2014 is to find the means to promote the best of what schools and regional campuses have to offer to the broader Pitt community. The best way, she believes, is by “socializing” programs, or making them accessible for others to see, grasp, and ultimately decide to invest their time.
Such engagement was what brought Gillotti back to Pitt after a more than 20-year hiatus. A consummate career woman with dual undergraduate majors in economics and history, she attended Pitt for its cost and urban location. Graduating in a scant two and-a-half years thanks to advanced placement credits and summer coursework, she worked her way through the executive offices of corporations on both coasts, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Duracell, GTE, and Quest Diagnostics. Each move brought a new set of challenges and responsibilities, but the subsequent workload and travel commitments squeezed her personal life, leaving little room for her alma mater.
In fact, it was not until she was well settled into Seattle, nearly 2,500 miles away, that Gillotti finally found the means to reach back to Pittsburgh. She credits Executive Director of Principal Gifts Allison Quick, and Vice Chancellor Al Novak, from Pitt's Office of Institutional Advancement with approaching her about re-engaging with the University.
What impressed Gillotti was that Quick did not just want to ask for a donation; she wanted to help Gillotti create something personally meaningful.
“This was different,” Gillotti recalls. She decided to take Quick up on her offer to visit campus in 2000, and she was impressed with what she saw. That visit became an annual event, and gradually, Gillotti’s involvement increased; she spoke with students, spent time with Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, and created a special program to help students from underdeveloped countries pursue graduate studies. With each step back into the Pitt community, she discovered a growing sense of the significance and belonging that previously had been lacking. It was the kind of world in which she wanted to be involved.
“I consider it a privilege to be part of that group,” Gillotti says.
She also became a member of the Dietrich School Board of Visitors, something she feared might be geographically difficult because of her West Coast location. However, technology has helped her remain connected: “I feel like I can virtually be there as much as I need or want to.”
She hopes that other far-flung Pitt alumni—whose number continues to grow well beyond the University’s early reputation as a regional institution—will likewise find the inspiration to become involved. She works hard to broaden and deepen the engagement between the faculty and the association and uses its infrastructure to build good relationships between the Dietrich School alumni and the community.
Gillotti is the first Dietrich School Director on the Pitt Alumni Association board, representing the school’s wide breadth of interests to the rest of the University. As she notes, the Dietrich School’s alumni comprise an audience ranging from freshly coined graduates in their early 20s to people in their 80s and 90s; she views her role as finding ways to engage them all.
“Coming up with offerings that appeal to that wide of an audience is no small feat,” she notes. But she points out that young alumni in particular have several ideas for using technology to help create engagement.
Gillotti hopes she can serve as an example by demonstrating how, even after decades of absence, she was able to find a niche. And she likewise hopes that her involvement will help shorten that time frame so others can jump into the alumni community more quickly.
“It’s never too late,” she says. “I have worked professionally for some of the largest kingpins of industry in the United States. From a leadership standpoint, Pitt sets the bar much higher than most corporations. Some of my best role models reside at the Cathedral of Learning.”