Moglia, an award-winning football coach and transformational business executive, is just the fourth alumnus to be honored with the Fordham Founder’s Award as well as induction into Fordham’s Hall of Honor and its Athletics Hall of Fame. He is also a member of Fordham Prep’s Hall of Honor and Football Hall of Fame, and received an honorary doctorate from the University in 2009.

“Joe embodies the Fordham way,” said Tania Tetlow, Fordham’s president. “From his time as a student at the Prep, his undergrad days at Fordham University, and throughout his business and coaching career, Joe has been closely connected to Fordham and all this institution stands for. Joe has made us proud by clearly living the Fordham principles and mission. The stadium upgrades wouldn’t be possible without Joe’s continued generosity to the University. We are honored to name this stadium after him.”

Fordham will begin renovations to Moglia Stadium at Jack Coffey Field in order to make the stadium a top-tier venue for games and University events. The improved facility will feature a state-of-the-art video board, seating and press box renovations, upgraded lighting, and other improvements that help raise the profile of the University, boost recruitment, and enhance the game-day experience.

A Life of Leadership on the Field and in the Boardroom

A son of immigrants who grew up in the Dyckman Street area at the northern end of Manhattan, Moglia played football and baseball for four years at Fordham Prep before attending Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“I loved and always appreciated the education I got from Fordham,” Moglia said, citing its Jesuit approach as well as the many strong friendships he formed via the University and the Prep. “I’m proud to have been able to have a positive impact on the lives of others, and that all traces back to Fordham. A big part of whatever success I’ve achieved across two career paths is because of the education that I received there.”

When Joe began at Fordham, he was already a husband and father, and completely responsible for his education. He funded those expenses by driving a yellow taxi cab and a truck for the United States Postal Service. He also worked in his father’s fruit store, all the while carrying a full course load at Rose Hill. Due to his responsibilities, Moglia wasn’t able to be part of the Rams football team, but it was at Fordham that he began his football coaching career as an assistant at Fordham Prep.

His coaching experience and the education he received at both the Prep and the University were formative for him, leading him to formulate, at age 21, his leadership philosophy – BAM – which defines the principles of a leader: standing on one’s own two feet, taking responsibility for oneself, treating others with dignity and respect, and accepting the consequences of one’s actions.

This philosophy, he said, “dealt with everything: The idea of spiritual soundness, really knowing who you are so you can make better decisions under stress; courage, the guts to do what you really believe is right; love, the recognition that leadership is not about you, it’s about the well-being of others; and the ability to adapt and adjust when things are not going particularly well.”

This philosophy guided him in his one-of-a-kind career as a winning head college football coach and successful Wall Street executive, he said. He coached high school and college football after graduating from Fordham and went to work on Wall Street in 1984, at Merrill Lynch, and eventually became CEO and board chairman of TD Ameritrade.

When he stepped down as CEO from TD Ameritrade in 2008, shareholders had enjoyed a 500% return. Joe stayed on as chairman of the TD Ameritrade board through 2020 when the firm was acquired by Charles Schwab. When the deal was announced, the combined company was worth $100 billion and had client assets of $7 trillion; when Moglia first arrived, these numbers were $700 million and $24 billion.

After stepping down as CEO of TD Ameritrade, Moglia decided to go back to football as a Division I head coach. In 2012, Moglia was named head football coach at Coastal Carolina University. In his last 11 years as a college football coach, Joe was part of eight championship teams and received the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year Award and the Lombardi Award. He was also inducted into 10 Halls of Fame, including the Vince Lombardi Hall of Fame, named for the 1937 Fordham alumnus. Moglia now serves as chair of athletics and is an advisor to Coastal Carolina University President Michael T. Benson.

Moglia Stadium

Moglia Stadium is part of a complex at the Bronx campus that includes Jack Coffey Field—the playing field for football and soccer—as well as Houlihan Park, the University’s baseball venue. The renovations will be a “game changer” because of the importance of the stadium as “a central theater of school spirit and school pride—internally on campus, externally in New York City and the tri-state area, and also for our alumni base,” said Fordham’s director of athletics, Ed Kull. The benefits of the stadium upgrades will extend not only to football and other sports but also to Fordham Prep, which uses University facilities as part of athletics collaborations, Kull said.

The stadium improvements also include new connections with a video control room in the Lombardi Center that, when completed, will be used to livestream all home athletics events and provide a training ground for WFUV student announcers and other students interested in broadcasting.

A new digital scoreboard and VIP viewing box are planned, along with other seating improvements.

The project will build on other recent enhancements like new offices for the football program, also supported by University benefactors. The stadium upgrades will help Fordham achieve parity with the stadiums at competitor schools and boost recruitment, “the lifeblood of the program,” aiding the program in its goal of once again reaching the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) playoffs every year, said Joe Conlin, head football coach.

Kull said the football program tries—successfully—to recruit student-athletes who can be academic achievers at Fordham. Conlin also noted the team’s many community service efforts, such as visiting children in elementary and middle schools and working with Team IMPACT, a nonprofit that supports children living with serious illness or disability.

The revamped stadium will reflect “the class of institution that Fordham is,” Conlin said. “We should have a great game-day experience. We should have a great stadium. It’s a fantastic school and we have a fantastic fan base, and we have the best tailgate in FCS football, so the stadium should match that.”

Joe Moglia, FCRH ’71, blazed a trail of ascent at Merrill Lynch and then at the helm of TD Ameritrade over 24 years until, in 2008, he decided to return to the most rewarding work he knew—coaching football.

A New York City native, Moglia served as a baseball and football team captain while attending Fordham Preparatory School and then coached football at the Prep while working his way through Fordham College at Rose Hill. After graduation, he coached and taught at a Catholic boys’ school near the University of Delaware, where he earned a master’s in education, and later helped Dartmouth College win two Ivy League championships as defensive coordinator.

In 1984, after 16 years of coaching, family responsibilities and his interest in business led him to join the MBA training program at Merrill Lynch—as the one football coach among 25 MBA holders. “Everybody said, ‘This football guy is never going to make it here,’” he recalled. But he excelled, becoming the firm’s top worldwide producer and rising to high-level posts before joining TD Ameritrade as CEO from 2001 to 2008.

When he stepped down in 2008, shareholders had enjoyed a 500% return. In 2009 he became chairman of the board. Recently, TD Ameritrade announced that they would be acquired by Charles Schwab. The combined company will be worth $100 billion and have client assets of $5 trillion; When Moglia first arrived, these numbers were $700 million and $24 billion.

Prior to 2019, he was the head football coach at Coastal Carolina University, and in his first five seasons he led his team to the national playoffs all five years and to four conference championships, posting an overall record of 56-22 and a winning percentage of .718. In his last 11 years of college coaching, he has been a part of eight championship teams. He has also received multiple Coach of the Year honors, including the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year award, and was the recipient of the Vince Lombardi Award, and inducted into the Lombardi Hall of Fame.

His career is the subject of the 2012 book 4th & Goal: One Man’s Quest to Recapture His Dream, by Monte Burke. And Moglia has authored books on both coaching and investing—The Perimeter Attack Offense: The Key to Winning Football in 1982 and Coach Yourself to Success: Winning the Investment Game in 2005. This year he plans to start writing a third book, on leadership.

In advance of the Founder’s Dinner, Moglia sat down with FORDHAM magazine to talk about lessons learned in boardrooms and on the gridiron, as well as his struggles with a speech disorder that always draws surprised reactions whenever he tells people about it.

What was it like going from coaching football to the world of business when you joined Merrill Lynch?
While I didn’t have an MBA at all, I did have the background and skill set and characteristics that would make for an effective transition. I really believed that my 16 years of experience as a coach made me a better businessman. As a coach, it’s absolutely critical to be able to handle yourself under stress. You’ve got to be able to understand people, think strategically, and make decisions quickly. While it’s helpful for a coach to be reasonably charismatic, he or she has got to be a great communicator, a good teacher. And as a coach you’re very often representing a community at large, whether it’s a university, a community, a state, or a town.

What’s some other common ground between coaching and business?
You have to be sophisticated and smart enough to have a well-developed strategy that has contingency plans. It’s much easier to adapt and adjust it if you’ve got a well-thought-out concept behind it, and if it’s simple enough to execute. I’d say based on game plans and business plans that I’ve seen from my competitors, if they have a fault, it’s that they’re not simple enough. It may sound smart, it may sound great in a speech and in the board room, but if the 50 people who work for you don’t know it that well, they won’t be able to execute it.

In either field, knowing the strengths and the weaknesses of any part of your organization is critical. So if you want to expand in China and you have no competitive advantage in China, you should think that through. But many businesses will say, “You’ve got to expand in China! How can we not?” But if you don’t understand your core competencies, if you don’t know how to lever those competitive advantages, that’s probably not a smart idea.

You also have to adjust based on your people’s strengths and weaknesses. In football, when the first-string quarterback goes down, for instance, the second-string quarterback is often expected to know the same system. But he doesn’t have the same skill set, so you don’t ask him to do the same thing as the other guy. The second- or third-string quarterbacks will practice certain plays that the team has in common, but they should also practice the plays they know they’re pretty good at. And in business, for instance, there are certain skills a chief financial officer is supposed to have, but one might really have an understanding of marketing, and another might be stronger at strategy. So I will shape the job differently for one CFO than I would for another.

How did you come to return to coaching?
I stepped down as CEO of TD Ameritrade because the timing was right. But then I got a call from a group of alumni at Yale telling me there was a chance the football job would be open at the end of the 2008 season, and would I be interested? No transition like this had ever happened in college football. But I thought about it; I’ve always looked at the game like chess, with 22 pieces moving at once with a lot at stake, under serious time constraints with everybody watching, and I’ve always found that intellectually stimulating. And as a coach, I got so much satisfaction from working with the players. Having an impact on them was very, very important. That was my mantra my entire business career. My people mattered and I knew I had an impact on them. That’s what drives me.

So going back and representing the university, the community, the alumni, the faculty, and the students, but also having an impact on a 20-year-old, helping him really truly grow up—I didn’t think anything else could give me greater satisfaction in life.

Among your awards and honors are some related to stuttering, including the Hero Award from the Stuttering Association for the Young. Can you talk about your own struggles?
I have a pretty serious stutter. In grammar school through college, if I knew the answer to a question in class, I wouldn’t raise my hand, because I was afraid I couldn’t get my words out. And then I decided that I wanted to take this assistant coaching job at Fordham Prep. Well, of course a coach has to communicate. So I would practice in front of a mirror again and again. I had to speak at the Fordham Prep football banquet for three minutes; I can’t tell you how nervous I was, but I prepared 10 hours for that three minutes and I got through it. There is seldom a time in my life where I don’t have a fear that I’m not going to be able to talk.

I’ve spoken in a lot of different places and I am so incredibly well prepared. I know I’ve got something to say and I’ve probably said it 150 times already. So I have a confidence level with that. But sometimes when I’m tired or stressed, I really struggle to get my words out. Sometimes I would bridge to another word quickly—I can’t get out “banana,” but I’d say “fruit.” I’d trick myself, just to get “fruit” out there. I’ve done a good job of controlling it over the years, but stuttering is still a very, very real thing for me.

How would your life be different if you hadn’t gone to Fordham?
A big part of whatever success I’ve achieved across two career paths is because of Fordham. I’ve always said that. I’ll say it again.

In fact, in her role as chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, clarifying seemingly impenetrable financial topics for the average person is a big part of her day.

“Too often with people who are pundits, it seems that their number one goal is to sound like the smartest girl or guy in the room, and more often than not they’re going to turn people off,” she says.

At Schwab, Sonders keeps a lot of plates spinning, providing market and economic analysis as well as spearheading investor education initiatives. She often shares her views as an expert guest on a range of television programs on CNBC, Fox Business, Bloomberg TV and Radio, and CNN, to name a few.

“We’re all time constrained, and there is an appreciation for [experts] to get to the point and to take complex [financial] topics and explain them in a way that’s easier to understand,” she says.

She maintains that investing is about more than just facts and figures, a widely held false impression that turns many people off before they even get started.

“I don’t use math to any significant degree in anything that I do on a day-to-day basis,” she says, emphasizing that strategy and analysis often are more at play. “There is this misperception [that this business] is all about stats and accounting.”

A Process, Not a Gamble

When it comes to investing, the 1990 Gabelli School of Business MBA graduate wants people to know that following the hot tip of the moment (or the trending topic on Twitter) is hardly wise.

In fact, there’s one question she’s asked often that she hates: Should investors “get in” or “get out” of the market right now?

“I have a love-hate relationship with that question,” she says. “I hate it because it’s a ridiculous question, but I love it because it gives me an opportunity to pontificate on why it’s a ridiculous question.

“Neither get in nor get out is an investing strategy,” she says. “That’s simply gambling on a moment in time. Investing should never be about a moment in time, it should always be about a process over time.”

And one-size-fits-all advice just doesn’t cut it in her view.

“I hate the cookie-cutter approach,” says Sonders, who adds that a 24-year-old with an appetite for risk warrants a far different investing strategy than a 70-year-old retiree.

Moving Beyond Gordon Gekko

In addition to slicing through what she calls a cacophony of financial advice due to social media and a 24-hour news cycle, Sonders is also adamant about clearing up some misperceptions about Wall Street—and the role that women can play there.

“One of the biggest shames of the aftermath of the financial crisis is how big of a black eye the industry has gotten,” Sonders says.

Wall Street and the broader financial services space are not brimming with Gordon Gekko-type clones, she says, referring to the fictional corporate raider who argued that “greed … is good.” She says that such a view discounts what a positive impact the industry has on so many individuals’ lives, and it overlooks opportunities that exist there for those who don’t fit that stereotype. “[Some people] may not understand what the broader industry does for investors, and for companies and our economy,” she says.

And that brings her to another myth about financial services: that it’s solely a boys’ club.

Women in Finance—a Bull Market

Sonders posits that the boys’-club culture likely dates back to a time when the typical path to Wall Street was through training programs set up by wire houses, which eventually funneled young professionals onto trading floors.

“There’s no question that’s kind of the classic boys’ network,” she says. “That sense of [women] feeling out of place [in the industry] might have been greater in that era. That’s not the path I took. I had a very different set of experiences.”

In addition to working with many women at the start of her career—she began at the Zweig/Avatar Group before moving in 1999 to U.S. Trust, which was acquired by Schwab a year later—she says the firms she worked for believed in promoting from within and rewarding workers based on their merit, not their gender.

“My only two jobs have been at firms that have been blind to gender,” she says.

Today, she emphasizes that there are so many “different and unique opportunities [for women] to start out in the business,” with the wealth management and private client spaces being particularly ripe for opportunity.

“We crossed the chasm where more than half the wealth in the U.S. is controlled by women,” she says. “It’s an awesome time for women,” she adds.

Looking back at her career, Sonders has no regrets.

“I have kind of a creed or motto that I think about in my life,” she says. “When I’m asked, what would you change? In general, my response is I wouldn’t change a thing. … The slightest little change would have put [me] on a completely different path.”

—Kelsey Butler, FCLC ’10

For more of Liz Ann Sonders’ thoughts on her career and opportunities for women on Wall Street, listen to her November 2017 conversation with fellow Fordham alumna Veronica Dagher, GABELLI ’00, ’05, host of The Wall Street Journal’s podcast Secrets of Wealthy Women.