Next month, Adrienne de la Fuente will bring her deep personal commitment to service to Rams worldwide as the new chair of the Fordham University Alumni Association (FUAA) Advisory Council. It’s a fitting role for the 2010 grad, a dancer and nonprofit leader who met her husband, David de la Fuente ’10, ’24 PhD, at Fordham.
The new role caps a time of change for de la Fuente, who recently left her day job to serve full time as executive director of Exit 12, a nonprofit that uses dance to promote healing and dialogue among veterans, families, and other people connected to the military.
Fordham Magazine caught up with de la Fuente in advance of next month’s 2026 FUAA reception to discuss her goals for the Ramily and how her mission-driven work continues to evolve.
What’s your vision for the council? What specific initiatives and focus areas do you think will connect and support the alumni community?
I want to try to align passion with needs: the passion of the alumni with the needs of the University. Alumni want to be connected, and I think shared mission is one of the fastest ways to create connection. I’m hoping to tap into the University’s strategic plan to determine what it is that alumni can really help [with as far as programs and academics].
We have a council of 24 members who come from a lot of different backgrounds, and my goal is to identify what strengths each person has. What areas of the University are they passionate about supporting? And how can we champion that?
Alumni want to be connected, and I think shared mission is one of the fastest ways to create connection.
And of course, giving back to Fordham can happen in myriad ways, but you should be thinking about how you can be bringing along your community with that as well.
You recently transitioned into a full-time role as executive director of Exit 12. What prompted the shift? Why now?
It was a turning point. My husband, Dave, was finishing up his PhD [at Fordham], the co-founders of Exit 12 had just moved back from the UK, and I felt like this was the moment when we could really build momentum with the company. And the only way to do that was to focus on it with undivided attention.
I’ve found that, while the nonprofit world is still a huge challenge, by giving it undivided focus, we are winning at momentum. It’s when you do it right, you see it pay dividends.
And you’re seeing some of those dividends, right? What strides have you made in your work with military veterans?
We’ve been able to really cement our relationship with the Intrepid Museum, so we’re doing an annual program with them, and we’ve been able to get into all the different VA locations in New York and do consistent programming and workshops with people who need to be more local or are less mobile.
We also have our signature residency programming. We’ve been to D.C., the Citadel and South Carolina, and we were just in Missoula, Montana, for two weeks.
We start out with a lot of choreographic tasks to help folks generate their own movement. And we pair that movement and ultimately create a dance together. It gives everyone the opportunity to tell their own story—to be part of a mission and a team.
