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Paul Allvin
Paul Allvin started as George Mason University’s new vice president of strategic communications and marketing on June 1.
Normally, his focus would be on building the institutional brand and voice for the university, and he’d have some time to reflect and get a sense of the university.
But he started June 1, in the middle of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, and a social crisis in the United States, all of which affect Mason’s students.
Now his job includes all of that, as well as Mason’s upcoming presidential transition, with president-designate Gregory Washington joining the university on July 1.
He’s ready to take it on.
“My first month is all about learning and preparing,” Allvin said. “We don’t have the luxury to pause for transition, given the pandemic and the university’s response required right now.”
He’s ready to move the university and the marketing team forward, adding that his vision and strategy for the office and will take shape as he collaborates with university leadership.
“Ultimately, this office should be home of the voice and institutional brand of Mason. That brand also lives in the colleges, schools, classrooms, labs and community programming,” he said.
Allvin was a first-generation college student who worked a summer as a ditch digger to fund his schooling.
“College opened my world to where I could go on my own abilities when taught, mentored and challenged by that academic environment.”
After graduating from the University of Arizona, he pursued a path of public policy and advocacy.
“I simply wanted to help as many other first-generation college students get to and through higher education as possible,” he said. “It has been a lifelong passion ever since.”
That is why Allvin said he is so excited to be at Mason.
Allvin has worked for nonprofits, in state government, and in higher education. In his 30 years of professional experience, Allvin has led strategic communications and brand stewardship teams at the University of Arizona, Make-A-Wish America, the USO, and America’s Promise Alliance. He has also been an op-ed contributor to The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and served as the senior communications advisor for former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano.
He led a rebrand for Make-A-Wish, and under his leadership the organization earned status as one of America’s five most beloved charity brands. At the USO, he helped position it as America’s leading military- and veteran-serving organization in 2017. And at the University of Arizona, Allvin led communications that included the transition of university presidents, and served as interim vice president of external relations.
Like many fans of college basketball, Allvin said he knew of Mason from its Cinderella run to the 2006 Final Four. But when he moved to Northern Virginia in 2013, he and his wife, Rhian, also learned of Mason’s reputation for being, in his words, a “solid, nonpretentious, welcoming university.”
They also saw the Mason impact firsthand through a Somali-American friend of the family who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Mason’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
She’s now preparing to head to Kenya to, as Allvin said, “start saving the world one resolved conflict at a time.”
“She is a living example of how the Mason environment empowers people to transform their lives,” he said.
Allvin said he hopes to put Mason on the map in a way it never has been before, and to continue supporting the university as an inclusive community that offers transformative life experiences to the most students possible.
“It’s a dream job,” Allvin said. “Higher education has made me who I am.… I have always been happiest when I have helped to pay it forward.”