Roopa Narasimhaiah

Roopa Narasimhaiah is Boston University’s Vice President overseeing Principal Gifts, Foundation, and International Advancement. She leads efforts to cultivate lifelong relationships with alumni and friends and to secure transformative philanthropy that advances the University’s research, scholarship, and educational priorities.

Before joining Boston University, Roopa served as Senior Associate Vice President of University Capital Giving at the University of Pennsylvania, where she led comprehensive fundraising strategies to support the institution’s vision and major initiatives.

Prior to Penn, Roopa was Associate Vice President for Development and Alumni Affairs at Yale School of Medicine. As a strategic partner to the deans of YSM and Yale School of Public Health, she helped grow fundraising by more than 50% and raised over $1 billion during her tenure. Her leadership produced some of Yale’s largest gifts, including a $100 million cancer research alliance, the largest corporate collaboration in Yale’s history, and advanced multidisciplinary research through university-wide and department-level campaign strategies. Roopa is known for working collaboratively with donors nationally and internationally and for applying an innovative, data-driven, solution-focused approach to philanthropy.

Trained as a neuroscientist, Roopa earned a PhD in developmental neurobiology from Wesleyan University and completed postdoctoral research in psychiatry at Yale. She entered advancement in 2007 after successfully securing research grants and discovering the powerful impact of philanthropy on scientific and educational outcomes.