Institutional fluency, cross-generational perspective, and an understanding of how culture operates at the intersection of academia, philanthropy, and power.
Ivy McKay is a graduate of the University of Central Florida and the University of Edinburgh. She works in institutional administration at the senior-executive level, navigating complex networks of scholars, donors, and institutional decision-makers with fluency and care.
Her ability to communicate clearly within and between those networks — and her understanding of how culture operates at the intersection of academia, philanthropy, and power — is exactly the kind of formation Interstice takes seriously. These are domains where what is signalled, what is withheld, and what is perceived between the lines often matters more than what is stated outright.
Her perspective represents that of a younger generation of capable professionals with a strong voice of intention and direction — a voice that enriches both the practice and the work it does. She advises through Interstice on institutional literacy, network strategy, and the particular dynamics of academic and donor-facing cultures.
"A younger generation of capable professionals with a strong voice of intention and direction."— Interstice, on the advisory board
An understanding, from the inside, of how academic and institutional networks actually operate — the written and unwritten codes of how scholars, administrators, donors, and decision-makers communicate with and about one another.
The perspective of a younger generation of capable professionals — attuned to how expectations, language, and institutional posture are shifting across generations in academic and donor-facing contexts.
Her formation at the University of Central Florida and the University of Edinburgh gives her fluency in both American and British institutional cultures — and the particular attention those two systems pay to different things.
Daily practice in communicating across deans, faculty, donors, and public-facing stakeholders — an applied form of cultural intelligence that informs how the advisory board thinks about institutional communication.
Academic and philanthropic institutions are cultures of their own. They have registers, rituals, and unwritten rules — how a donor is approached, how a faculty member is deferred to, how a dean's request travels through a network of intermediaries before it reaches the person it is meant for. That is not incidental to institutional life. It is institutional life.
Ivy's daily practice at the intersection of scholars, donors, and senior leadership is a form of applied cultural intelligence — the kind the practice takes seriously. Her perspective sharpens how Interstice thinks about institutional communication: what travels cleanly through an academic network, what gets lost, and what generational shifts are reshaping both.
Ivy advises through Interstice — on institutional literacy, network strategy, and the particular dynamics of academic and donor-facing cultures. To begin a conversation, reach the practice directly.
hello@intersticeatelier.com