A. Joseph Tamer
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
I helped lead an effort to create an immersive virtual field trip supporting a $20M campaign to preserve Māhukona, a Native Hawaiian cultural and sacred site threatened by development. Our team traveled to Hawaiʻi to work with community elders and meet members of the Dorrance family, capturing the history, cultural significance, and community connection to this place in an experience that could share its story with prospective donors and supporters.
Partnering with the Hawai’i Land Trust
Cultivating Relationships with Federal Agencies
My relationship with NASA spans more than two decades, from leading the Astrobiology Academy to serving as Deputy PI of Infiniscope. Through ASU’s Leadership Academy, I trained to advocate with federal agencies, then cultivated relationships across NASA Headquarters and JPL by listening to program priorities and connecting them with our educational goals. Those relationships helped us build upon NASA’s initial investment and secure more than $21M in additional funding for ETX initiatives.
Collaboration with the ASU Foundation
Over the past decade, I have worked closely with the ASU Foundation to cultivate philanthropic support and develop proposals advancing ASU’s mission. Our efforts included a $100M MacArthur Foundation proposal and multiple Gates Foundation initiatives securing more than $10M, including a private pitch to Bill Gates. REAL CHEM was later identified by the Gates Foundation as one of its most successful postsecondary education investments across its 25-year history.
Recognizing the risk of relying too heavily on federal grants, I led the development of CourseWorks as a new earned-revenue strategy for ETX. I developed the business plan, helped negotiate the partnership with Carnegie Mellon, and established governance and revenue-sharing structures for the alliance. Today, CourseWorks generates nearly $750K in annual auxiliary revenue for ETX, providing sustainable resources to support and continually improve our courseware products.
Diversification of Revenue Streams
