Gloria Snyder started out as a student at Stony Brook University when she received her master’s degree in liberal studies in 1972, and she never really left.
Snyder has always been involved in campus activities, including as a founding member of the Stony Brook Medicine Development Council. She has recently been received the leading role as chair of the council.

“I felt very good that they had the confidence in me to ask me to take on the position,” Snyder said. “I find it very exciting and very challenging.”
When the council first started in 2008, there were only three members. The purpose of the Development Council is to find ways to bring the community closer to the Stony Brook University Hospital and have SBUH be more a part of the community.

That way, “people come here and don’t think to go to New York City when they have something major,” Snyder said. “They can come to this medical center and get top care in their own backyard.”
Snyder finds it her responsibility to make that happen for SBUH.

“I think it’s very important for me to get people to undertsand that,” she said. She would like to “bring in as much financial support as we can for the medical center for specific programs we’re growing and for the Children’s Hospital.”

The council is a vital part in integrating such a relationship between Long Island residents and Stony Brook.

“The Development Council is a critical part of how we advance the multiple missions of Stony Brook Medicine,” Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the School of Medicine, said. “With Gloria’s appointmnet as the new Head of the Development Council, I know we can count on amazing efforts that will advance our role in the health of our community.”
Snyder is involved in the Stony Brook community in other ways than the medical center. Those who walk through the Stony Brook Union may see the Snyder Hillel Center, the facility for Jewish life. With the donation that she made with her husband, Mark Snyder, also a Stony Brook graduate of 1969, the center opened its doors in 2000.
She has always been immersed in the fundraising business. She is the vice president of Mark J. Snyder Financial Services, Inc., a financial consulting firm. She owned and operated Specialties Galore, Ltd., a product fundraising company, for 28 years.

But she’s never strayed far from her alma mater.

“My husband is a Stony Brook graduate and we live locally,” she said. “We always loved Stony Brook University and the potential that it is and we wanted to do whatever we could to give back, so this is our way of giving back.”

As the new chair of the Development Council, Snyder is going to make sure it does exactly what its mission is — maintain the imagine of the medical center and raise money for it and all its smaller agencies, such as the Children’s Hospital and the Cancer Center.

And to make the public know what they have.

“They don’t realize what a gem is here,” Snyder said.

She has a personal goal as well, which she will make happen by meeting with as many people as she can and trying to get the word out in any way possible.

“One of my biggest missions is to get the word out,” Snyder said. “I also feel you can’t add people to help financially untl they understand what a great medical center we have and what great leadership we have there.”