Director of Advancement
Tammy Nicastro has been a member of the University of Illinois community since she began her undergraduate degree in 1989 in the Department of Theatre’s acting studio program. Midway through the program, she shifted gears to study Animal Science. Thanks to the undergraduate research program in the Reproductive Physiology group in Animal Science, she was able to work on a novel research project in the area of embryonic development.
She was recruited by the Genetics and IVF Institute where she began her career in the human in vitro fertilization field. Realizing shortly after leaving the University that she wanted more education, she returned the following year to begin a graduate program in the Reproductive Physiology group in Animal Science.
Shortly after beginning her graduate studies, Carle Clinic offered her a position to start an IVF lab at their Urbana campus. She started, then concurrently ran the IVF lab at Carle and continued her graduate studies on a project that spanned biology, nanotechnology, and engineering, for five years.
Interested in the business world, she then took a position with Pharmacia/Pfizer as a specialist in their women’s healthcare sales and marketing division where she traveled the country representing the division, training the sales force, and managing key relationships with physicians. Wanting to switch gears and work on something that was connected to the greater good, she found herself in the position of Director of Development in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. After three years of technology and development bliss, she decided to take on the challenge of opening a West Coast advancement office as part of a new initiative from the Chancellor’s office, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement and the University of Illinois Foundation.
Tammy lives in San Francisco with her three children, dog and cat.