For Mumbai, India, native Samrat Dhar, a desire to master this new reality drew him to the Gabelli School of Business, where he’s earning an M.S. in media management.

After earning a B.S. in economics in 2007 from St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, Dhar worked for a hedge fund, for Groupon, and most recently, for a gaming company for mobile devices that he founded with his brother. He was also making short films on the side, and in 2017, he started looking for a way to jumpstart his entrepreneurial ambitions.

New York as Tech and Media Hub

“There were programs in the Midwest, and even in Boston, but I thought New York was a better environment because there are more tech people in New York than there are in Silicon Valley,” he said, pointing to the recent $200 million sale of New York-based digital news company Cheddar as an example.

“The Flatiron district is the perfect incubator for all sorts of new tech startups. There’s so much happening there. The talent is now readily available on the East Coast, which wasn’t the case 10 years ago.”

As a St. Xavier graduate, Dhar was attracted to the familiarity of Fordham’s Jesuit heritage. But New York City was brand new to him. He came here with no preconceived notions, he said, and found the city to be welcoming and warm. His experience at the Gabelli School was equally positive.

“The best thing about my experience the last two years has been the curriculum, and how you have the liberty to structure it in the direction that you want it to go based on what you see yourself doing 10 or 15 years from now,” he said.

“It allowed me the flexibility to take courses in finance, strategy, and entrepreneurship.”

Exploring the Stories That Unite

It also allowed him to direct Unexplored India, a 23-minute-long forthcoming documentary about an annual fair in Mhasa, a tiny hamlet 50 miles northeast of Mumbai. The village takes its name from the Hindu deity Mhasoba, and the fair, which is a tribute to Mhasoba, is a common way for villages around the country to honor deities. Fairgoers come from neighboring villages and even other states to honor Mhasoba, which translates to “Buffalo God.”

“What drew me to this was how folklore crosses boundaries and borders. In India, there are so many diverse states, and every state has a different language and a different culture. But there are certain things that can hold people together,” he said.

Bozena Mierzejewska, Ph.D., an associate professor of media management, who supervised Dhar’s independent study, said that the master’s program’s flexibility is no accident.

“The media industry is so diverse, it would be very difficult to give a set of say, five classes, and then say, ‘You know everything,’” she said.

“Because if you want to be a filmmaker, it’s different than if you want to be in the book publishing industry. So there are three core courses, and then you design your electives around your main interests.”

The Future of Technology and Entertainment

Of all the courses he took, Dhar said Consumer Adoption of New Media resonated the most. He learned a great deal about emerging trends in media consumption, such as holographic TV.

“Couple that with the entrepreneurship course, you could actually build a business idea around it. You can see how all that information can be made relevant for the future,” he said.

“When you’re in that environment where there’s a lot of thinking happening, whether by yourself or your peers, it forces you to come up with more innovative ideas.”

Spending time in New York opened his eyes to an area of finance that he had not been exposed to when he first entered that field: private equity and venture capital firms that specialize in media and the entertainment industry. It helped him understand why the city is often referred to as the media capital of the world.

“One of my most memorable experiences was a visit to the Time Warner Medialab, where they create focus groups and have been trying to essentially build a system to evaluate whether a project will do well,” he said, noting that measuring audience reactions has taken an almost clinical approach. “They get people of different demographics to participate, and they measure not just responses to questions, but also things like their vital stats, their heartbeat.”

Dhar is weighing several options for jobs after graduation. He may work for himself but would also consider working for an established firm. One thing he’s sure of is he will stay in New York City.

“So far, I’ve seen the academic life. Now I’d like to see the professional life of the city,” he said.

Mierzejewska said she expects Dhar to find success in whatever path he chooses. She was impressed with his devotion and compared his independent study to the kind of work that doctoral students might tackle.

“He didn’t just do a research paper; he did an analysis of all the materials that will help young filmmakers manage a project,” she said.

“He was trying to learn theory on the one hand and develop his film documentary on the other. It was very unique, very ambitious. It was all coming from his own natural talent, which I found to be extraordinary.”

Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign
correspondent, addresses the Class of 2013.Photo by Chris TaggartView the high res image.

On a balmy Bronx morning, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel did not mince words at Fordham’s 168th Commencement, held May 18 at the Rose Hill campus.

Engel, a New York City native and one of the nation’s foremost chroniclers of Middle East wars, revolutions, and political transitions, used his commencement address to reflect on being captured and held hostage for five days last December in Syria.

“As I sat there and thought, many times, ‘OK, now I’m about to die. It will come very soon, and it will be a bad death,’ I also thought, and this is critical, ‘At least I tried. At least I got part of the way,'” he said.

“‘I had my 50 years to accomplish something, and unfortunately,’ I thought, ‘I’m not going to get all the way, because these people in ski masks are about to cut my life short.’ I was angry, I was annoyed, but at least I knew I was going to die trying to be myself.”

Along with Engel, singer Dion DiMucci; Paulette LoMonaco, R.G.S., executive director of Good Shepherd Services; John Tognino, PCS ’75, former chair of the Fordham University Board of Trustees; and Patricia E. Harris, first deputy mayor of New York City, received honorary degrees. A total of 3,445 degrees were conferred at the ceremony.

Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Sally J. Bellet, Esq., LAW ’76, former vice president of real estate development for Amtrak, will each receive a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, at the School of Law diploma ceremony on Sunday, May 19, at Radio City Music Hall, where Bharara will address the Law School’s graduating class.

Kaushik Basu, Ph.D., chief economist and senior vice president for development economics at the World Bank, will receive a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, and give the keynote address at the diploma ceremony for the Graduate School of Business Administration, to be held Sunday, May 19, at Avery Fisher Hall.

Peter Vaughan, Ph.D., who is retiring as dean of the Graduate School of Social Service, will speak at that school’s diploma ceremony on Monday, May 20, also at Avery Fisher Hall.

Engel told graduates that if they subtract the 20 years of life they’ve lived so far and the 10 final years they can expect to live, that leaves them with roughly 50 years to make the most of their lives.

Engel, speaking about four archetypal personalities, said it is of the upmost importance that graduates of the Class of 2013 have the guts to pick their path now, be it as a hedonist, commander, nurturer, or explorer. He said the type of the explorer fit him best. Only when graduates know for sure what suits them will they be able to truly accomplish something great. The good news, he noted, is they have those choices.

“Most people don’t. I’ve been in warzones for a long time. I’ve met nurturers, hedonists, commanders, and explorers who, because of where they live and the famine and poverty and violence all around them, don’t have options. If you are living in Aleppo, Syria, today, you don’t have the luxury of sitting around and wondering, ‘What’s my true nature, and what can I do that will allow me to experience it?'” he said.

“If you live in Aleppo, Syria, today, your main concern is staying alive. You have choices. Don’t squander this opportunity. Have the guts to take a chance.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, told the Class of 2013 that although their academic careers might be coming to a close, their transcripts for life were now going to be updated via “take-home,” “open-heart” tests that will emerge from everyday situations.

“Strangely enough, when all is said and done, all of these heart and life tests will consist of only two frightening questions: Whom do you love, and what do you love? These questions will, in turn, invite and challenge you to identify, embrace, and nurture the values that will define and direct your life,” he said.

“My friends, as you prepare to confront these questions and thus begin the work of compiling the transcript of your lives, I hope that you will always be haunted and guided by the challenge and the dream that stands at the heart of Jesuit education: To educate men and women for others, men and women whose lives will always be marked by competence, conscience, compassion, and a deep commitment to justice and the cause of the human family.”

Father McShane also thanked the Class of 2013 for raising $1.046 million the night before, the largest class gift in the University’s history. Be conspicuous in compassion rather than in consumption, he implored them, and live lives of bold, daring love. He said that if they allowed themselves to be bothered by injustice, embrace suffering, and champion the poor, they would be true sons and daughters of Fordham.

“When I see you on Fifth Avenue, and you call out to me and tell me what you have done, I promise that I will throw open my arms and say, as I listen to what you have achieved in love, ‘You are, all of you, as you are today, my great heroes.'”

See the full video of the ceremony here.