Robert Thompson joined the U.S. Fund for UNICEF as Senior Vice President for Development in September 2008. A native of North Carolina, Thompson comes to the U.S. Fund after serving a four year term as Senior Director of Development at Columbia University Medical Center. In this capacity, he was responsible for overseeing an alumni campaign of $100 million, comprised of annual, special and planned gifts, with specific responsibility for all major gifts of $100,000 or more. He was also charged with supporting the Center's $1 billion major campaign—a goal that was achieved over two years ahead of schedule.

Previously, Thompson served as the Executive Director of Membership and Development for the United Nations Association of the United States of America, the nation’s largest grassroots foreign policy organization and leading center of policy research on the United Nations and global issues. Thompson has also held executive level positions at the Institute for Cancer Prevention in New York City, the New Jersey-based Financial Executives Research Foundation and Wake Forest University.