That thread of connection didn’t stop unspooling after four years, though: When Spiro returned to the D.C. area after graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2007, she joined the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Washington, D.C., and that ultimately led her to her first job, as manager of information services with the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU).

Today, more than 10 years later, she’s not only the vice president of communications at AJCU, which comprises all 27 Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S., but also president of the Fordham alumni chapter that helped jumpstart her career. And now, as always, her focus is on helping fellow Rams connect with each other.

This month, the D.C. chapter is hosting two events: an outing to a Washington Spirit soccer game on September 17 and a September 21 reception welcoming Fordham’s new president, Tania Tetlow, as part of her tour to meet with alumni throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Finding Fordham—and Herself

Each year, Spiro’s high school welcomed back graduates from the previous year, inviting them to share experiences from their first semester at college with current students. It was during this assembly that she heard from a former theater acquaintance about Fordham and realized that it ticked her college checklist boxes.

“I had applied to, I think, about seven other schools besides Fordham,” Spiro said. “But the first time that I went there in the fall of my senior year with my dad and my brother, it was really just love at first sight.” (Spiro’s brother, John A. Howes Jr., also became a Ram, graduating from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2009.)

A communications and media studies major, Spiro made the most of her time on campus, having grown up being encouraged by her parents to get involved “not just in extracurriculars or hobbies that were passions … but also through service, too,” she said.

In addition to being a part of the Fordham Club, a combination honor society, advisory group, and fraternity; and a tour guide with the Rose Hill Society, Spiro was able to explore one of her passions: singing. She was a member of the University Choir for four years and vice president of the choir her senior year. She performed with the choir at Carnegie Hall during her first year and went on a singing trip through Spain the following summer.

Amid her classes, extracurriculars, and excursions, though, Spiro said the most important thing Fordham taught her was how to find herself—and her place in the world.

“In those formative years between 18 and 22, when you’re trying to figure out your place in the world and how your talents can really contribute and how you can make a positive contribution—I think that Fordham really helped me figure that out and navigate the next chapter in my life,” she said.

Sweet Symbiosis: The AJCU and the Fordham Alumni Chapter of D.C.

Since accepting that first position at AJCU in 2007, Spiro has served as the organization’s director of communications and, since June 2020, vice president of communications. She joined the Fordham alumni chapter’s board at roughly the same time, serving as president for almost a decade now. While the two roles may not seem intertwined from the outside, to Spiro, her work at each organization informs and benefits the other, with collaboration and teamwork underlining it all.

“The work that I do with the alumni chapter overlaps and has helped strengthen my work when it comes to alumni relations at AJCU,” she said. “We all want to achieve the same goal,” bringing people together for mutual benefits.

On the AJCU side, one way she’s done that is by advocating the sharing of resources and a sense of pride among Jesuit colleges and universities. Spiro was behind the #JesuitEducated campaign when Pope Francis, the first Jesuit priest to be elected pope, came to the United States in 2015. She and her collaborators used a tagline, “Transformational leaders are Jesuit educated,” as the basis for a marketing campaign. They wanted to highlight that more than just preparing students to get a job, Jesuit colleges and universities prepare students for careers of impact by teaching them how to think, dig deep, and seek a greater purpose.

And on the Fordham side, the chapter supports the Alumni Chapter of Washington, D.C., Endowed Scholarship, which helps make it possible for more high-achieving students from the Washington, D.C., area to pursue full-time undergraduate study at Fordham.

A Balancing Act

Heading up communications for a national association is a high-profile, demanding job, but Spiro said one of the things she loves about working at the AJCU is the work-life balance—which for her has meant the ability to pursue graduate study at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned a master’s degree in communications in 2012, and to start a family. She married Peter Spiro in 2017, and they now have a 9-month-old daughter, Holly.

“Even before becoming a mom, I was always afforded the opportunity to have a really good work-life balance,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a busy job, but I’ve been able to do other things along the sides,” such as accept gigs as a freelance singer.

She’s performed the national anthem at various Jesuit colleges and universities, including Creighton, Gonzaga, and even Fordham before the Homecoming game in 2015. Lately, however, Spiro’s performances are tailored for an audience of one: She performs The Sound of Music’s “Do Re Mi,” theatrical hand signals and all, for her infant daughter, Holly.

Over the years, she said she’s been able to commit her time to a number of activities and organizations close to her heart, from handling media relations for a major North American Lithuanian folk-dance festival in 2016—her mother’s family is Lithuanian—to singing in a professional choir for a year, requiring her to sing for 10 Masses between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.

“I was able to do that because I had a very supportive boss who understood that this was a passion of mine,” she said. “And I have a piano in my office, and so as long as I practice before work and after work and got my work done, I was able to do that as well.”

The Next Chapter

Though she’ll be stepping down from her role as leader of Fordham’s Washington, D.C., alumni chapter at the end of the academic year, she’s “proud of the way that we’ve been able to continue reaching alumni where they are and producing a variety of events to fit all of the needs in all of the different stages of life”—whether that’s through a baseball game outing, a happy hour, or a service project.

Spiro has had some “really extraordinary moments” as president, from dining at the Supreme Court in 2015 when the chapter gave the Brien McMahon Memorial Award for the Distinguished Public Service to Justice Sonia Sotomayor to simply rallying around one another during the pandemic.

“I just feel so strongly connected to this school,” she said, thinking about the University’s effect on her life to date. “And every time that I return there, it just feels like a home away from home. Fordham really helped me to just figure out who I was and who I was going [to be].”

Fordham Five (Plus One)

What are you most passionate about?
My family and friends, music—I play the piano and have a side career as a singer— writing, cooking, reading, spending time outdoors, and traveling.  And, of course, Jesuit higher education!

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Now that I’m a mom, I often reflect on two recent pieces of advice from both of my parents. From my dad: “The most important thing you can do for your children is to smile at them.” From my mom: “Always be confident in what you are doing as a parent.” I’m very grateful to have my parents living nearby, and for the many ways they help my husband and me with our daughter!

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
I actually never visited it until after graduating from Fordham, but the Brooklyn Bridge has become my favorite New York landmark in recent years. In a similar vein, the Eiffel Tower in Paris is one of my favorite places in the world; both are such staggering feats of engineering, architecture, and design that never fail to astound me!

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
I was such a bookworm growing up, but kind of lost my love of reading for pleasure in my 20s, due to work, graduate school, etc. So, in my 30s, A Gentleman in Moscow was the book that helped me to get back into reading for pleasure and even start a virtual book club with family and friends that is still thriving, even as we (hopefully!) get out of the pandemic.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire(d) most? 
There are four professors—several of whom I have been fortunate to keep in touch with over the years—who were particularly helpful in teaching me how to become a stronger writer and more engaged student of the world: Christine Firer Hinze, James Kim, James van Oosting, and Andrew Tumminia. I also want to give a special shout-out to Rob Minotti, who conducted the University Choir during my four years at Fordham and helped me to grow as a singer and performer.

What are you optimistic about?
My daughter! Holly was born in November 2021, right between the Delta and Omicron phases of the pandemic. I’m convinced that she (and all other pandemic babies) is going to save the world. If they can make it through this crazy time in our history, they can make it through anything.

An economist helps produce a monthly report that gets U.S. presidents tweeting

As a senior economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Wander Cedeño helps to produce the nation’s monthly jobs report—a highly cited indicator of the economy’s health. Growing up in New York City’s Washington Heights, he says he never could have imagined “working steps from the Capitol and having current and former presidents tweet about your report. It’s very humbling.”

Cedeño received scholarship support for his undergraduate studies at the Gabelli School of Business. “The help that Fordham provided sealed the deal in my being able to attend a top-notch institution,” he says.

It also helped seal another deal: On a trip with the University’s Dorothy Day Center for Service and Justice, he met his wife, Honduran-born Aryany (Pérez) Cedeño, FCRH ’11. The two were married in 2013.

For his master’s degree in international political economy and development (IPED), Cedeño was awarded a scholarship from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “I think it’s a very special place,” he says of IPED, adding that he appreciated the program’s small size and the diversity of his cohort. He studied abroad briefly in the Philippines, where the conditions he witnessed made a big impact. “I came from a working-class neighborhood and I saw poverty in the U.S., but seeing poverty in a developing country is on another scale. It just makes you outwardly focused,” he says. “And it reaffirmed my desire to live a life of service.”

After graduation, Cedeño served as a New York City Urban Fellow. He worked in the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, where, among other things, he helped assess and catalog the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. “It was a massive cleanup, a crash course in emergency response,” he says. “It was really a dynamic experience.” He joined the labor statistics bureau in 2013, and was promoted to his current position last December.

Leaving New York was bittersweet, Cedeño says. He misses his parents, who were born in the Dominican Republic. “But I think everyone understands the journey. Not only mine, but my family’s, coming to America 30 years ago.”

Read more “20 in Their 20s” profiles.

A proud Bronx native, Sotomayor said she was honored to receive an award from a university that is just miles from where she was born. In speaking to the crowd of 200, she reflected on the meaning of service as something beyond her extraordinary professional achievements, underscoring the importance of serving people, not just institutions.

Joseph M. McShane, SJ, president of Fordham, said the University community—and particularly its Latino students—see the justice’s life of service as the “fulfillment of the American Dream in an extraordinary way.”

He said that when she received an honorary degree from Fordham in May 2014, “Our Puerto Rican students, our Dominican students, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, they looked at her and saw not just her, but through her achievements they saw a future that is possible for them.”

Fordham’s D.C. alumni chapter established the Brien McMahon Memorial Award in 1962 in honor of the late U.S. senator, a 1924 Fordham alumnus, and his work to cultivate peaceful uses of atomic energy. Past recipients include former news anchor Katie Couric, Mother Teresa, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, and Walter Cronkite.

Brennan spoke to a capacity crowd of 165 people on Sept. 23rd at the club’s annual event which brings together D.C.-area alumni and friends to benefit the Club’s scholarship fund. The scholarship fund helps deserving students from the Washington, DC area attend Fordham.

One day after his 59th birthday, Brennan paused from his hectic schedule to take a bit of time for nostalgia, recalling for his fellow Rams how Fordham’s Jesuits made a significant difference in his life by instilling a love of learning.

“They opened my mind to the wonders of the world beyond our borders and encouraged me to think deeply about what I believe, as well as why I believe it,” he said. “True understanding only comes from engaging with the world.”

“Education was more than turning us into straight A students, it was about guiding us on a journey,” he continued. “I didn’t realize it at the time […] but Fordham was preparing me for a life of public service.”

The Fordham Alumni Chapter of Washington, D.C. hosted the evening. Michael Sheeran, S.J., president of Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, gave the invocation. Chapter president Deanna Howes, FCRH ’07, introduced and presented Brennan with the award. US Representative Steve Stockman and Representative Paul Broun joined in the chorus of “Happy Birthday” along with author Alice McDermott and her husband David Armstrong; former trustee Mark Tuohey, LAW ’73; trustee Ed Stroz, GSB ’79; and President’s Council member Tom Kelly III.

The McMahon award was established in 1962 in honor of the late senator’s work to ensure civilian, not military, control of nuclear weapons development and to cultivate peaceful uses of atomic energy. Previous recipients include former news anchor Katie Couric, Mother Teresa, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Walter Cronkite, Colin Powell, and Joseph O’Hare, S.J., former president of Fordham.

In the nearly two years since Hillary Fisk, FCLC ’12, graduated from Fordham, she has continued to be an advocate for the University—just as she was as a student.

At Fordham College at Lincoln Center, she was a member of the Lincoln Center Society, a group of student ambassadors who help prospective students get to know the University. She led tours of campus and answered questions about Fordham from high school students and their parents. Now she’s a member of the Fordham Alumni Support Team (FAST), a national network of alumni who support the recruitment efforts of the Office of Undergraduate Admission.

“Students can go online all they want to read about Fordham—class ranks, SAT scores—but if they tour the school or talk with me, they can make a more personal connection. I talk about what it was like to go to Fordham, live in the dorms, be a part of the community,” says Fisk, an executive assistant in government relations for Hewlett-Packard in Washington, D.C. “That’s a lot of what FAST is about.”

John Donahue, FCRH ’10, an admission counselor in Fordham’s Office of Undergraduate Admission, says that during the most recent admission cycle, FAST members met with prospective students at 37 college fairs in Texas, Louisiana, California, Illinois, Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere.

“Alumni really help us be in more places than we can be as a staff,” says Donahue. “They bring a different perspective and often that perspective is something that a student can struggle to find. Sometimes it rings more true for someone to hear from an alumnus. It can be a powerful conversation.”

“I had a great experience at Fordham, and I want to give back because of what it gave to me,” says Fisk. “I love sharing my story with prospective students.”Fisk attends college fairs in the D.C. area, where she speaks to high school students and their parents about Fordham. She also attends the Fordham Alumni Chapter of D.C.’s annual regional reception, where prospective students can speak with an admission counselor and meet alumni who work in a variety of fields.

The Springfield, Mo., native began her Fordham story after meeting an alumnus. During high school, Fisk spent a summer at Northwestern University in a theater arts program. She took a class taught by Broadway producer John Johnson, FCLC ’02, who would go on to win a 2013 Tony Award for his work on the play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. “I talked with him and heard about his experience. He loved Fordham and said to go on a tour,” Fisk says. “After visiting campus, I knew it was where I wanted to go.”

At Fordham, she studied political science and secured several internships in New York City and Washington, D.C., including positions at the congressional office of U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams, and MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Fisk headed back to her hometown after graduation to be director of campaign operations for former Missouri state treasurer Sarah Steelman, who was seeking election to the U.S. Senate. Steelman lost the primary election, but Fisk took that campaign experience to Tampa, Fla., in August 2012, and worked as a production coordinator at the Republican National Convention.

“It was an amazing experience to see it and understand it from the inside,” Fisk says. “Everything I had learned in my political science courses at Fordham, I got to see at [the convention]live and not just from CSPAN on my TV.”

In October 2012, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she’s found a job and community to fit her education and interests. In her position with Hewlett-Packard, Fisk supports the government relations team’s lobbying efforts in the United States and Latin America. Fisk also spends time playing bingo with local military veterans as a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a volunteer women’s service organization.

“She’s a really good example of what people can do with their Fordham education,” says Donahue.

For more information on FAST, please contact John Donahue at [email protected].

– Rachel Buttner 

For Christina Pinder, MC ’05, participating in community service has always been a family affair. She and her younger siblings (including Nadia, a rising junior at Fordham College at Lincoln Center) learned early on about the value of helping others.

“My parents have always been huge advocates of giving back to the community,” she says. “We were always doing projects for school or our church.”

In April, Pinder, a board member of the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Washington, D.C., shared that spirit of service with members of her Fordham family. She led the D.C. group’s involvement with Fordham’s Chapters for Charity program. She and 15 other alumni were among the more than 8,000 volunteers who took part in Servathon 2013, an annual event sponsored by HandsOn Greater DC Cares, a nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers to build a stronger D.C. community. The Fordham group worked at Stuart Hobson Middle School organizing library books and cleaning the hallway and storage room.

While Pinder, a project manager with Greater DC Cares, managed a different site during the Servathon, she kept in contact with the Fordham group throughout the day. “I got nothing by positive [feedback]. There was excitement going into and leaving Servathon,” she says. “I thought that was such a wonderful day.”

“I think the spiritual fulfillment you get from painting a school, or cleaning a park, or helping restore a landmark makes you feel not only more connected to the community,” she said, “but also more connected to your innately good self.” Pinder has been volunteering with Greater DC Cares since 2008. The projects she works on vary—from mentoring and reading to children to playing cards with senior citizens—but they always have one thing in common.

At Marymount College of Fordham University, Pinder majored in communications and Spanish, and had two big plans in mind: study abroad in Spain and prepare for a career in broadcast journalism. She grew up learning Spanish in school and from her Panamanian grandmother, but she wanted the cultural immersion. She got it in the fall semester of her junior year, when she lived in Toledo, Spain, studying the city’s renowned architecture and honing her Spanish skills.

As often is the case during college, when students are still discovering and developing their interests, her career path shifted. She had her sights set on a career in broadcast journalism, but after an internship with the booking department at ABC’s Good Morning America, she lost interest in the long early morning hours and a future in journalism.

“It wasn’t for me, but it was still a really great experience and GMA holds a special place in my heart,” she says. “God bless morning news crews!”

She returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C., after college and turned to the nonprofit sector, working at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for five years in various administrative roles. Now she’s refocused her career on event planning. At Hill Country Barbecue Market, she’s coordinating events for the restaurant and maintaining its social media presence—and putting her Spanish fluency to use every day in her interactions with Spanish-speaking staff members. She’s also enrolled in the event management certificate program at George Washington University School of Business. “I love it,” she says. “It’s built for the working professional.”

When she returned to D.C., she also sought out a way to stay connected to Fordham and found it with the alumni chapter.

“Lots of alumni move down here from New York. The alumni may not have had the same experiences as you, but they went to the same school,” Pinder says. “It’s a nice way to keep connected.”

One of Fordham’s oldest and most active alumni chapters, the D.C. chapter hosts an array of activities for local Fordham alumni and their families, including trips to sporting events and museums, Third Thursday happy hour and networking nights, and a Summer Send-Off reception for incoming Fordham freshman students and their families.

The chapter’s biggest annual event is the Congressional Reception on Capitol Hill, hosted by the Offices of Alumni Relations and Government Relations. All proceeds go to the D.C. Scholarship Fund, which is currently funding scholarships for three Fordham students.

“It’s a great event to catch up with fellow Fordham Rams, meet new ones, and see the reach of support for Fordham. When [Father McShane] speaks, he lights a fire under you that makes you so proud to be affiliated with Fordham and want to give all you can to help see it flourish,” says Pinder.

“It’s been really cool to be involved.”

– Rachel Buttner