Kramer

Sunday, May 16, at 1:30 p.m.

Professional Schools

Charlene Kahlor Kramer ’73
Philanthropist and corporate executive Charlene Kahlor Kramer ’73 is a Harpur College of Arts and Sciences alumna, and with support from the campus, she was the first in her family to attend college, earning a bachelor’s degree in English. Kramer is currently vice president for corporate communications at the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae).

In a desire to help others overcome financial barriers similar to those she experienced in her pursuit of a college degree, she and her husband, Roger Kramer ’72, have endowed a number of scholarships at Binghamton for academically gifted students with financial needs. She also volunteered her marketing and managerial expertise to the University’s largest fundraising effort to date as a member of the steering committee for the University’s first-ever comprehensive gifts campaign - the 1996-2002 Campaign for Binghamton University.

Kramer joined Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest source of funds for home mortgages, particularly for low- to moderate-income families, in 1978. She is the key architect of an outreach program specifically designed to help economically disadvantaged and minority families purchase their own homes. As a senior executive, she manages Fannie Mae’s national award-winning advertising campaigns, as well as its internal communications, publications, video production and web communications.

Since its inception in 1993, Kramer has managed the company’s multilingual Opening Doors consumer campaign, the most comprehensive effort ever undertaken to provide lower income and minority families with easy to understand information on the home-buying process. She also authored “Opening the Door to a Home of Your Own,” the consumer guide on homeownership that has served as the foundation of the outreach effort. To date, Opening Doors has been translated into nine languages and been distributed to more than 10 million prospective home buyers. The program has been recognized with numerous national advertising awards including the New York American Marketing Association’s EFFIE, a prestigious advertising award based on quantifiable results; the International Association of Business Communicators; and AdQ, which measures actual reader readership response to advertising campaigns.

Kramer also oversees Fannie Mae’s social responsibility outreach programs, and her work in this area has led to praise for the corporation and its workforce policies from such publications as Working Mother and Fortune.