After more than 18 years of service to the , including 15 years as its executive director, Dolly Duffy ’84 will retire effective June 30, 2027, concluding a tenure defined by faith, service, innovation, and an abiding belief in the power of the Notre Dame family.
From her roots in the small town of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, to Notre Dame communities in nearly every corner of the world, Duffy has spent her career bringing people together around a University and a mission she loves deeply.
Duffy joined the Alumni Association in 2008 and was named executive director in 2011, becoming the first woman to lead the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Over the ensuing 15 years, she helped guide the Alumni Association into an era of global and digital connection while preserving what has always made the Notre Dame family distinctive: relationships rooted in faith, friendship, service, and a desire to be a force for good.
Today, the Notre Dame family includes more than 160,000 alumni and 262 clubs around the world. Under Duffy’s leadership, the Alumni Association has found new ways to help alumni, parents, and friends remain connected to Notre Dame wherever life takes them.
“When Father Sorin envisioned that Notre Dame would become a great force for good, he could not have known the impact our alumni would have in every corner of the world,” said University President “Thanks to Dolly’s extraordinary leadership over the past 15 years, the Notre Dame family across the globe is more connected than it has ever been, bound together by cherished friendships, a desire for lifelong learning, a shared commitment to serve others, and an unfailing dedication to and love for the mission of Our Lady’s University. We could not be more grateful for Dolly’s many invaluable contributions, and we look forward to celebrating her in the months ahead.”
During her tenure, the Alumni Association broadened the ways the Notre Dame family engaged with the University in faith, learning, service, and professional life. FaithND, the Alumni Association’s spiritual outreach program, has grown into a worldwide community, with its Daily Gospel Reflection alone reaching more than 100,000 subscribers. ThinkND, the association’s free online learning community, opened the intellectual life of the University to learners around the world, while the career-focused IrishCompass created new opportunities for alumni and students to mentor, network, and support one another professionally.
Duffy also championed opportunities to put faith into action through service. Family Volunteer Camp brings generations of Notre Dame families together to serve the South Bend community each summer, and the Notre Dame Global Day of Service each spring mobilizes thousands of volunteers through hundreds of projects across the United States and around the world.
Together, those efforts reflect a conviction at the heart of Duffy’s leadership: A relationship with Notre Dame is meant to deepen over a lifetime.
“Dolly has spent her career strengthening what we believe is the greatest alumni network in the world,” said , vice president for University Relations. “Numbers alone cannot capture her impact. Dolly understands that Notre Dame has always been about people, caring for and accompanying one another through life, and finding ways to serve something larger than ourselves. She has brought an uncommon combination of faith, energy, and love for this University to everything she has done.”
That spirit has carried Duffy across the globe, meeting alumni, parents, and friends where they live and helping connect local communities more deeply with Notre Dame and one another.
“Dolly helped us think more expansively about what it means to belong to the Notre Dame family,” Dick Nussbaum, former Alumni Association president and current Hesburgh Trustee, said. “Whether you are 10 miles from the Golden Dome or 10,000 miles away, she wanted you to know that Notre Dame was still your home. And then she challenged all of us to take the gifts of the Notre Dame community back into the world. Dolly did the impossible. She became an ND legend after replacing an ND legend, [former Alumni Association Executive Director] Chuck Lennon.”
Whether welcoming families home for Reunion, joining the Notre Dame community in prayer, gathering Notre Dame communities thousands of miles from campus, or accompanying members of the Notre Dame family through moments of celebration and loss, Duffy has embodied the Alumni Association’s commitment to keep Notre Dame close to its people and its people close to one another.
“Serving the alumni, parents, and friends of the University has been the privilege of a lifetime,” Duffy said. “I truly have the best job at the University. I get to meet the most amazing people and help them connect with each other and Notre Dame. As I tell our volunteer leaders and the incredible staff at the Alumni Association, we are keeping the Notre Dame spirit alive all over the world. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
A global search will commence shortly to identify the next executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association.