Then came the welcome news that ended the uncertainty: her costs would be covered by gifts from members of the Fordham University President’s Council, a group of accomplished alumni who mentor students and work to advance the University. 

“I literally started tearing up,” said Mosquea, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “I told my mom, and she was ecstatic. I couldn’t believe it. It was just so helpful, and I was so grateful for it.”

Mosquea is one of dozens of students to benefit in recent years from President’s Council members’ gifts to make Global Outreach accessible to students in Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), who have high financial need. 

A Social Justice Focus

Council member Anne Williams-Isom, FCLC ’86,  made the first such gift in 2018 after learning that the HEOP leadership wanted to make Global Outreach an integral part of the HEOP experience. Since then, member gifts have helped dozens of students in the program, including 48 students who took part in Global Outreach this year and last year alone. 

Mosquea participated twice in Global Outreach, which runs week-long projects in the U.S. and abroad—in partnership with other organizations—that are centered on social justice and community engagement. 

‘My People’: A Personal Connection

For the first project, in spring 2023, she traveled to the Dominican Republic, where her family is from; learned about environmental conservation efforts firsthand; and met up for the first time in 14 years with her father, who lives there. “It was just an incredible experience to not only learn about the land, but also my people as well,” she said. 

Last spring she served as a student leader for a project in Puerto Rico, where she and the other students helped efforts to convert an old U.S. military base into a community center that promotes environmental education and ecotourism. 

Both projects fueled her desire to work in environmental education and sustainability consulting. “Global outreach is so unique, it’s so beautiful,” she said. “It’s really enriched my life in so many different ways.”

Deepening Spirituality

Another student in HEOP, Fordham College at Rose Hill junior Miguel Picazo, also received support for traveling to Mexico with Global Outreach in 2023, where he learned about sustainable farming, and then for traveling to London this year. Through a partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service, students visited migrant-heavy areas of East London and South London, attended Mass at Jesuit churches, and volunteered in their food pantries, among other service work. 

The London Masses, with their diversity of celebrants, reinforced some of the impressions gleaned on his Mexico excursion, when he encountered migrants from diverse countries who were sustained by their spirituality.

“This spirituality sense makes you feel more human—we’re not all different, we all want the same thing,” Picazo said, “a better life, better education, a better future for our families and kids. And experiences like that stick with you for a while.” 

He is the founder of two scholarships at the Gabelli School, including one that honors the memory of his brother, Jonathan Gach, GABELLI ’82, who died from cancer in 2018. He also created a research award named for his parents, Harold and Sydelle Gach, and has given to various academic centers and other initiatives at the Gabelli School. He’s a member of the Fordham University President’s Council and a supporter of the Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund.

Gach’s teaching and philanthropy are informed by his own student experiences but also by values honed during his varied career with Accenture, the global technology and consulting firm he served for 37 years.

Tell me why you created the scholarship in your brother’s memory.
Ours was a working-class family, and our parents didn’t have money for the University, so my brother and I both worked to pay for school. We were not really beneficiaries of campus life because of our working schedules. As much as I loved the Gabelli School, and it set me up for life, I know I missed out on some opportunities, so I want to afford students a chance to have that broader experience.

Why do you support so many different areas?
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate is the school’s integrated objectives. I’m involved in the Responsible Business Center, which is geared toward research on many of the world’s challenges. I started off with the endowed scholarships, but as I started to understand better the importance of research, I’ve started to give in that area as well.

You teach a course called The Ground Floor that’s popular beyond the Gabelli School. What does it cover?
We give the students a business foundation. They get a little bit of accounting, marketing, finance, operations, etc., but also mission and ethics. We have guest speakers who help them with career discernment. We also ask them to develop an idea for a startup that addresses at least one of the U.N.’s sustainable development goals, and almost every year, at least one or two teams try to launch their business. A few have even gone to the Fordham Foundry for help.

What’s your approach to teaching students about ethics in business?
The point I make to students is that very seldom do companies’ ethical issues arise from malevolence. It’s a slippery slope, and I teach them about the warning signs. Management is not infallible. They make mistakes. You can’t just assume, “I’m in the corporate world, I need to toe the line”; you need to have your own point of view. To me, this is deeply ingrained in Fordham and the Jesuit culture, and I think this is a broader lesson for the role of a citizen in a democracy or an employee in a company. Almost every company has whistleblower channels.

What other lessons do you emphasize in your courses?
The importance of maintaining relevancy in the business world. That’s terribly important, because business is changing very fast. Companies used to do five-year strategic plans; now they do one-year strategic sprints. You have to stay relevant in your domain and continue to invest in your ongoing education.

Scholarship gifts support access and affordability, one of the pillars of Fordham’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student. Learn more about our campaign and make a gift.