“Like a lot of kids, I had challenges when I was younger,” said Schwartz at a March 13 talk sponsored by the Gabelli School of Business’ Fordham Wall Street Council. “My mother died from cancer when I was 14 years old, and to say that I didn’t do well in high school would have been an exceptional understatement.”

Following high school, Schwartz worked at a local gym where a Rutgers alumna was a client. Every time she’d come in, she would encourage him to apply to the university, he said. Though he didn’t consider himself a good student, he applied and was rejected. 

But Schwartz said the alumna asked Rutgers to “take a fresh look” at him. After interviewing Schwartz in person, they later accepted him, he said.

“I think that I can mark pretty much every critical part of my career, where someone was willing to invest in me, spend time with me, and take a chance,” said Schwartz, a native of Morris Township, New Jersey.

In college, he developed a love of economics, which later sparked his interest in finance.

“I realized along the way that I liked incremental challenges,” he said. “But really the takeaway should be that if you work hard, people will invest in you.”

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs in 1997, Schwartz spent most of his career at Citicorp. He entered Wall Street in 1987 “just in time to witness the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunge 22.6 percent,” according to a 2012 profile in Bloomberg News.

“Innovation is present in financial services,” he said. “I think that if you have an interest in solving complex problems for clients or specific areas of markets, there is a unique way to participate.”

As an executive in an environment driven by excellence, Schwartz said the firm attracts high-quality candidates from around the country who possess exceptional analytical, financial reporting, and problem-solving skills. But talent has no boundaries, he said.  When he interviews candidates for positions at Goldman Sachs, he takes a unique approach.

“For me, the interview is more about problem-solving skills and how people handle stress,” said Schwartz. “I’ll say, ‘Tell me about yourself,’ which is a good ice breaker. “Then I’ll ask them to sell me something that is on my desk.”

For Schwartz, routines are fundamental in the financial sector.

“I’m very routine centric and I’m very fanatical about my calendar,” he said, adding that he likes to “create calm around unreliability.”

Schwartz said aspiring finance professionals should aim to discover careers in the sector that will give them the most fulfillment.

“You want to feel good when you walk into whatever firm you walk into,” he said. “Is it a place where you feel comfortable and see yourself being challenged?”

Having recently announced his retirement from Goldman Sachs in April, Schwartz said his experience at the firm was beyond what he could imagine.

“When you leave a firm like Goldman Sachs and you’re as fortunate as I am to experience that, the thing that you miss are the people and the shared experience,” he said.

“That disconnect in perception is tied to the divergence in the data,” said the veteran Wall Street stock bull, who began working at the firm in 1990 before being named partner in 1998.

“Some people, in fact, have a better set of outcomes than others.”

At a talk hosted by the Fordham Wall Street Council and the Gabelli School of Business on Oct. 17 at the Lincoln Center campus, Cohen said employment performance of the U.S. economy by geography is an important marker. She compared employment data from small towns, which tend to have vanishing industries, with big cities like New York and San Francisco, which have experienced higher job growth.

“Even people who are not educated and are living in a community that is doing well, will do well,” she said.

Cohen, who described the U.S. economy as being on “autopilot” since the recession, said the single fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy is exports.

“That’s probably not what you would have gathered based on political discourse in this country,” she said, explaining that government spending at the federal level is in fact, the only area of the U.S. economy that hasn’t grown.

Unpacking the keys to economic success

A look at economies around the world suggests that inflation is not an issue of concern, she said. Because of these analyses, Cohen didn’t find it surprising that the S&P 500 hit a record high— despite fears about North Korea and the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

She also said that economic volatility is no longer at record highs, but at record lows. “For those people who are concerned that the Federal Reserve or other central banks are going to . . . slam their feet on the brakes, that doesn’t seem really likely,” she said.

Cohen emphasized that productivity still determines the long-term success of any economy.  While the United States is still the number one spender when it comes to research and development (R&D), U.S. productivity gains are about two-thirds of the level that they were during the post-World War II economic expansion, she said.

“We used to be so far above everybody else that we weren’t even on the scale,” she said.

Now more than ever, countries like Japan, Switzerland, and Germany are investing in an economic model that doesn’t just focus on low-cost production, but on producing things of high quality.

Cohen argued that the common belief that companies would invest more in the future if tax rates were lower, isn’t a viable argument.

“They’ve got plenty of cash, they’re just not using it to the same degree as they did previously,” she said.

She estimates that the economy and profits will continue to climb. Most markets are priced where they should be.

However, she said she is “very conscientious that there are things happening that are outside of the toolkit of quantitatively oriented, data-oriented people like me.”

“That has to do with some of the policy changes that are under discussion and some of the geopolitical instability,” she said.

“That’s the one that is the biggest capital anybody can have to safeguard his own future,” he said.

“When [Investcorp] calls a customer and says ‘We have an investment to offer you,’ immediately we get an appointment. That says to me that [our]work has been synonymous with that reputational capital. We are welcomed because we built the trust and respect of that client base.”

Kirdar, who received his MBA from the Gabelli School of Business in 1972 and was awarded an honorary doctorate last year, was the guest of Fordham’s Wall Street Council, which brings together business faculty, staff, students, and friends interested in the various sectors of the capital markets. The event was sponsored by Thomas Galvin, GABELLI ’83.

In a Q&A session with Donna Rapaccioli, PhD, dean of the Gabelli School, Kirdar reflected on his long career in banking and investment, the state of his a native Iraq, and the intricacies of doing business in the Middle East.

Kirdar said he looked to Fordham for his MBA because he’d attended a Jesuit high school in Iraq, and therefore knew it would be a great education. The two years he spent earning his MBA while working full-time at Allied Bank International were very difficult, he said, and he saluted several attendees in the room doing the same.

“If you have that kind of conviction and determination, that’ll take you a long way in the future,” he said.

In fact, he said he though a lot about those difficult years when he wrote his most recent book, Need, Respect, Trust: The Memoir of a Vision (Orion Publishing, 2014), he said.

“I define leadership not by the positions you’ve occupied, but by the obstacles you have overcome. So for those who are doing it the hard way, that’s one of the obstacles and it shows your determination.”

Before Kirdar founded Investcorp, which specializes in global alternative investments such as private equity, hedge funds, real estate, and Persian Gulf growth capital, in 1982, he worked for Chase Manhattan Bank. Asked what he thought about banking regulations today, he said it helps to remember what life was like during the 2008 financial crisis.

“After that experience, a great deal of regulation has been put forward. I would not consider those as obstacles. They’re there to create the groundwork of principles of what is doable or not. Banks have more equity now than before the crisis, and I think that’s healthy,” he said.

When it comes to investing, Kirdar said that Investcorp looks for long-established companies that haven’t performed as well as they once did, and tries to find out how they can recapture that success.

“We really rely on companies that have brand names and track records in their own marketplace, but today [many]are not doing well because of some reason.

“If we can find the reason, they we can sell the past of the company,” he said.

He expressed optimism for the future of the Gabelli School, which was unified this year with Fordham’s graduate school of business under the leadership of Dean Rapaccioli.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in these hallways and I have a big place in my heart for Fordham,” he said. “I’m proud to be here, I’m proud to see you, and I’m proud to share with you my own experience.”

A finance veteran, Rieder is the managing director and Chief Investment Officer of fundamental portfolios at BlackRock, as well as a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets and a recent inductee into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame.

The market will be much more volatile in 2015, Rider predicted in his Feb. 3 talk to an audience of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends.

One factor spurring this volatility is demographics, he said.

“We’re going through a demographic evolution like nothing we’ve ever seen before—the population is aging faster than it ever has,” said Rieder. “This means that the global economy is growing slower than it ever has historically, because when more people draw from the economy than contribute to it, you break the potential growth in the system.”

For fixed income, slower global economic growth will mean lower interest rates, he said.

Another factor that Rieder linked to increased market volatility was technology, which he said is a major yet “grossly underappreciated” dynamic. Increasingly sophisticated technology has led to decreased cost of production, reduced cost of labor, and deflated prices overall.

“I’m an avid believer that technology is changing the ecosystem today. I don’t think central banks, markets, or even investors appreciate just how big the effect of technology is,” he said.

He offered the iPhone as an example of how drastically a new technology can influence a market. A single $650 phone has displaced $2,200 in collective worth of other products, such as cameras, camcorders, calculators, and even flashlights.

“Two-thirds of the products in this system were extinguished all because we have this item we carry around in our pockets,” he said. “And it not only replaces them, but also does the job better.”

Formed in 2010, the Fordham Wall Street Council fosters collaboration among business faculty, staff, students, and friends interested in various sectors of the capital markets.

In its final installation of panel discussions for the school year, the Fordham Wall Street Council invited three heavy hitters in finance to participate in a conversation on gender and corporate leadership on April 25. Heidi Miller, Ph.D., former president of J.P. Morgan International, joined Cathleen Ellsworth, GBA ’93, managing director and chief marketing officer for First Reserve Corporation, and Rae Etherington, GBA ’94, managing director of BNY Mellon Clearing, LLC.

The event, sponsored by the Graduate School of Business Administration, took on a more casual tone than some of the council’s previous events, which often veered deep into policy or theory. Not that the participants weren’t well versed, they simply weren’t there to talk about that. Etherington said she’s usually called on to talk about CAT bonds, not glass ceilings.

The room overlooking Central Park at the New York Athletic Club, once an oak-paneled bastion of male dominance, was filled with to near capacity with women.

None of the panelists started with a leg up in the finance industry. Both Etherington and Ellsworth talked of humble beginnings, with both their fathers on the police force. Etherington taught French in small town in Idaho, while Miller began her career with a doctorate in history from Yale.

“The question I’m often asked is ‘How does someone with a Ph.D. in history become the CFO of what was then the largest bank in the United States,'” she said. “I’ve always found that question somewhat puzzling, as I myself have described my career as inadvertent, meandering, and spontaneous.”

Miller said that if such an answer doesn’t satiate audiences looking for something a bit more concrete, she could offer up “Heidi’s Top Rules to Live and Work By.” Advice, she said, that could be taken regardless of gender…

1. Only work for people that you respect.
“You don’t have to like them or have dinner with them, but you do have to respect them… Bad bosses are to be avoided at all costs… Insecurity in a boss means that their only desire is to shine only themselves and consequently they won’t give you the opportunity to shine independently.”

2. Take jobs that are enjoyable, not just the one where you think you need to learn something.
“Sometimes someone is great at marketing and they think they better learn finance, and then get stuck in those finance jobs and fail…  I benefited from being in areas that were less sexy than others. It was in those marginal areas that people didn’t flock to that gave me an opportunity to do more than someone at my level might have in another area. I remember when I went into emerging markets everybody was into leverage buyouts. Leverage buyouts were crowded with every alpha male in the bank. But as a consequence I was able to take on roles that were well beyond my qualifications at that moment.”


3. It’s not the name of the organization that you are asked to work for; it’s what you do.
“Go somewhere and work with people, whether it’s a blue chip or not, and work where you’ll have a breadth of opportunity. It’s not the name on the door, it’s what you do. Again, big companies fail. It’s much more important to develop your skills.”

4. Work with supervisors to clearly define your job, how your success will be measured, and where it will land you.
“Take control of these

6. Cultivate your network.
“Collect business cards. Even if you’re not searching for a job, find out what they do. Ask them what makes them successful in their jobs. These are conversations that people love to have, they love to talk about what they do. This becomes part of your network. I don’t care if that takes ten or twenty years, that network will hold you in good stead… Stay in touch and build your organic network.”

7. Take risk.
“Sometimes a woman who applies for a job will have a resume that has 90 percent of the experience needed to qualify for that job, but the conversation will focus on the 10 percent that disqualifies them. Women are reluctant to jump that experience gap and claim they can do it. A guy comes in and his resume is just the reverse, and spends that time in the interview and sells the gap.”

8. Set your limits and articulate them clearly to your boss and yourself.
“Burnout is real. We have limits; we have families, and community interests. If we deny these other interests in our lives, we often get resentful and reach a point where we can’t do the job.”

9. Find your own style, your own voice, and your own authenticity.
“You have to do it your way. If you’re looking and reading every book and trying to figure out ‘What’s the way I have to look in order to be successful?’ Well, if it’s not comfortable, it’s not going to be right.”

10. Be flexible. 
“Sometimes you’ve got to roll with the punches, industries change and you’ve got to be prepared to change as well. You’ve got to be open to doing different things. Business is great because you are constantly learning and you constantly need to reinvent yourself. There are so many different things to do under this umbrella of finance.”

In a separate and final piece of advice for women, Miller quoted former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who said, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help women.”

Pace made the remarks on Nov. 13 at a lecture sponsored by the Fordham Wall Street Council, Cyberterrorism and Implications for Financial Markets and Platforms.

Within days of the talk, the Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T executive Frank Jules said that cyberattacks on AT&T had doubled in the last four months and the Washington Post reported that President Obama issued a secret directive allowing the military to act more aggressively toward cyberattacks.

Pace currently serves as distinguished visitor-in-residence at the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA), a position that stands as just one example of cybersecurity relationships being forged by the University with a cross-section of leaders from government, industry, and the academy.

Pace said that coordination between the private sector and the government will be key to protecting the nation’s computer networks from an inevitable attack.

Currently, nation-states are the only entities that have the ability to launch a crippling attack on another nation. But that will change, said Pace—and it’s not a question of if, but when.
“Whether it’s nation-state sponsored or terrorists, criminals, or hackers, we have got a huge problem,” said Pace. “And part of the problem is we have not been able to talk about it.”
Fordham adjunct professor Anthony J. Ferrante, FCRH ’01, GSAS ’04, teaches two courses on cybersecurity in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences, which he unofficially refers to as “extreme hacking” courses.

“Academia is uniquely positioned to moderate this discussion because its focus is on research and development and it comes from a neutral position,” he said. Since 80 percent of the Internet is privately owned, coordination, not competition, will play a key role, he said.
Fordham tackled the subject in 2009 when the University partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch its first International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS). It has co-sponsored three more ICCS conferences since, and it remains the nation’s only cyber security conference partnering with the FBI.

ICCS, which will be held again in August 2013, is co-organized at Fordham by D. Frank Hsu, Ph.D., Fordham’s Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science, and Dorothy Marinucci, executive assistant to Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“The Holy Grail of cyber security is everybody sharing information,” said Marinucci. “What’s unique about Fordham’s approach is its partnership with the FBI; you need to factor in the law enforcement angle when dealing with cyber security.”

If the DEFCON hacker convention in Las Vegas is the “black hat” convention of computer hacking, then Fordham’s developing reputation, with its overwhelming law enforcement angle, could very well become a “white hat” antidote.

Pace said the challenge for the federal government is to maintain national security secrets while assisting the business community which is under constant attack. Even at the federal level, those who understand the nation’s cyberattack capabilities are reluctant to communicate with those on the defense side.

“Our system is set up so that only the people who absolutely have to know, know the most important secrets of our country,” said Pace.

He added that if dealing in secret information presents a challenge within the government, it gets far more complicated when protecting the private sector.

“We need to get those folks together and sit down and [talk about]how they would be attacked,” said Pace. “And now, understanding the vulnerabilities, how might we work together?”

Pace said that while securing individual computers is one thing, securing an entire corporation is another matter entirely. It is also big business; the Wall Street Journal quoted AT&T’s Jules as saying it could be a $40 billion market.

David A. Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA), said that cyber security has become part of “business sustainability.”

“It’s a huge practice,” he said. “It’s now the way that businesses think about how they set themselves up and there’s a lot of pressure to secure the critical operations of the firm.”
GBA is gearing up to the challenge through the IBM-sponsored Center for Digital

Transformation under its founding director W. Raghupathi, Ph.D. Raghupathi also holds law degree in intellectual property in information technology from Fordham Law, underscoring the University’s emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach to the problem.

Indeed, the cyber talent pool freely flows across several Fordham schools and the colleges, and includes the foremost among the University’s experts on national security and terrorism, Karen Greenberg, Ph.D., director of Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security, which puts out the weekly “Cyber Brief.” (Greenberg recently wrote an article in the Huffington Post titled, “Will the Apocalypse Arrive Online?”)

Meanwhile, Hsu is working toward developing other cyber security programs at Fordham as well.

“The idea is to bring emerging technology to government and industry on both a national and international level,” said Hsu.

In remarks delivered to the Graduate School of Business Administration’s Fordham Wall Street Council on Sept. 23, William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said that the economy is slowly healing, though it remains challenged by significant headwinds preventing “any meaningful pickup in the economy’s foreword momentum.”

Dudley said that payroll and income tax increases, as well as the Congress’ budget sequestration, continue to drag on the economy. While he remained hopeful that the situation should ease in 2014, he said that ongoing budget battles in Washington could change that.
“It verges on the edge of fantasy [that]there will be a bipartisan collective decision on what to do with the long-term fiscal path,” he said, clarifying that the views were his own and not those of the Fed.

He suggested that such a bipartisan agreement on a fiscal path would go a long way to setting up a financial roadmap the nation would not likely waiver from in the future. Governmental credibility would be reinforced, and Americans would feel less uncertain about spending and investing.

He listed several good economic indicators, including signs that American households are paying down their debt—with delinquency rates on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards in decline. He said that housing prices have strengthened and that homebuilding has picked up. Lastly, he noted that the private sector’s profit margins have been high, with cash flow strong and credit availability improving.

Nevertheless, he remained wary.

“Currently, improving economic fundamentals versus fiscal drag and somewhat tighter financial conditions are pulling the economy in opposite directions, roughly canceling each other out,” he said.

Dudley pointed to other concerns, including the “hollowing out of the middle” in the labor market. He said high-end and low-end jobs are doing fine, but the jobs in the middle remain vulnerable to technologies and automation.

“Go to a factory floor in the United States and see how many workers there are—it’s incredibly automated,” he said.  “That has consequences; it affects income distribution.”
Although the Federal Reserve cannot address the issue of income distribution, Dudley said it is “very disturbing” that it has skewed toward the high end over the last 20 years. He said the chance for upward mobility in the nation is “not at all as good as we think it is.”

He said that the full impact of the federal government cutbacks have yet to register completely. He cited university research as one area that will suffer under sequestration, as much of it is dependent on federal grants.

“This will eventually squeeze university budgets over time,” he said.

Dudley reiterated his support of a Sept. 18 decision by the Federal Open Market Committee to continue the Fed’s purchasing of long-term Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities “until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially.”

As the Fordham Wall Street Council launches its third year of programming, this season’s first speaker will set a powerful tone for the year to come. William Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, will deliver the talk, which is sponsored Graduate School of Business Administration(GBA).

“It is an honor and a privilege to welcome William Dudley and we look forward to hosting this important event,” said GBA Dean David Gautschi, Ph.D.

“A Special Program with The New York Federal Reserve” will take place on Sept. 23, from 8:45 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. in the E. Gerald Corrigan Conference Center in the Lowenstein Building at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

In addition his position with the Federal Reserve, Dudley also serves as the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the group responsible for formulating U.S. monetary policy. Dudley will also bring a private sector perspective from his years as partner and managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he was the firm’s chief U.S. economist.

Seating is limited and advanced registration is required. For details contact GBA Assistant Director for Development Jon Liberatore at (646) 312-8268 or [email protected]. Admission: $25 for alumni and $30 for non-alumni.

With indexing on one side and hedge funds on the other, proponents of the opposing investment strategies seemed to agree more than disagree at a Feb. 12 Fordham roundtable.

The conversation played out at the New York Athletic Club as the Fordham Wall Street Council teamed up with the New York Hedge Fund Roundtable for “A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Searching for the Alpha 40 Years Later.” The Graduate School of Business Administration (GBA) sponsored the event which was organized by several GBA alumni and Sris Chatterjee, Ph.D., associate dean of GBA. Kevin R. Mirabile, a member of the Fordham business faculty, moderated.

The talk derived its title from the 1973 book by indexing proponent Burton Malkiel, Ph.D., the Princeton University economist, and Malkiel was on hand to argue his point of view. Indexing, he said, is an efficient strategy, even in countries where financial markets are not particularly efficient.

In 1973 Malkiel said he suggested that a blindfolded chimpanzee could throw darts at the stock pages of the Wall Street Journal and select a portfolio that did as well as the experts’ portfolio picks.

While he admitted that the anecdote was extreme, he nevertheless used it shake up a Wall Street community that, at the time, didn’t allow for index funds. (Three years later the Vanguard Group started the first index fund.)

Malkiel acknowledged, however, that there were plenty of firms with active investment in hedge funds that had great long-term records.

“If I knew back in 1973 that Warren Buffet was going to be Warren Buffet, I would’ve said ‘Buy Berkshire Hathaway, don’t buy a simple index fund,'” said Malkiel.

While there will surely be Warren Buffet over the next 40 years, exactly who that might be is anyone’s guess, he said, adding “you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of active managers who actually beat the index 2 percentage points or more.”

“The one thing I’m absolutely 100 percent sure of: the lower the cost that I pay to the purveyor of my investment service, the more there’s going to be for me,” he said.

Scott MacDonald, Ph.D., head of research at MC Asset Management Holdings, LLC. and a purveyor of hedge funds, acknowledged that hedge funds do have larger performance fees. But their more nimble nature allowed them to take advantage of the better instruments and thus produce more profit.

MacDonald cited several areas of interest for managers that are abetted by a more active role, including emerging markets, frontier markets, and infrastructure needs, which he noted exist worldwide. The United States alone is projected to spend $57 trillion trough 2030 on infrastructure, and the market also exists in China and Russia, he said.

Both men agreed that investment in global funds, whether through index or hedge funds, will play a bigger role, particularly in those developed nations where aging populations are leading to depleting social welfare systems, while a waning younger population is supporting those systems less and less.

“Even China with its one child policy, has a higher youth population per capita than Catholic Spain and Catholic Italy,” said Malkiel.

The two men also shared a concern that bonds are not a very good investment while our nation’s politicians remain intractably mired in indecision. (Both issues, health care and political morass, were concerns for experts at Fordham’s Economic Round Table held two weeks ago.) They also agreed that if a hedge fund is to be a success must stay ahead of the curve to stay relevant—unlike the Dot.Com debacle some years back.

Plenty of hedge funds “have no real edge,” said MacDonald, but they are still better suited then mutual funds to take advantage of change, provided they have the ability to change as well.

“Like a good comedian, you can’t keep using the same material,” he said.

In concluding, Malkiel admitted that even he doesn’t index everything in his portfolio.

“Telling someone they can’t beat the market is like telling a 6 year-old that Santa Claus doesn’t exist,” he said. “You know, investing is fun–I even try it myself.”

The Fordham Wall Street Council was formed in 2010 by the Graduate School of Business Administration to foster collaboration among GBA students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends interested in the various sectors of the capital markets.

By launching seven degree programs in two years, GBA is setting an “unheard-of” pace as it seeks to stay ahead of seismic changes in the market for advanced business degrees, according to a March 20 webinar by David A. Gautschi, Ph.D., dean of the school.

The school is also raising its visibility, building ties with alumni, and launching new international ventures aimed at nothing less than redefining graduate business education.

“The goal for GBA is to reposition us so that we’re at the front of the changes that are taking place right now. And the changes are momentous,” Gautschi said. “We are no longer going to be trying to replicate models of how business schools have operated in the past. We’re trying to anticipate what businesses are going to be needing over the next five to 10 years, and then adapting accordingly.”

In a sign of the school’s expanding global presence, Gautschi spoke to 90 alumni, faculty members, staff members, students, and friends of the school who were dialing in from as far away as Turkey and China. He described a volatile market for business education, marked by questions about the utility of the MBA, growing interest in U.S. business schools among international students, and growing competition from business schools abroad. Interest in graduate business degrees is growing among students under 24, although it is dropping among the 24- to 30-year-olds who have traditionally sought them.

The seven degree programs have been developed through collaboration among faculty members, advisors and alumni. The three master of science programs launching this fall will address skill shortages identified by industry:

— The master’s in marketing intelligence will focus on data-driven marketing decision making, bridging two skill sets that are often separate. “There are people who have strong analytical skills but do not know marketing,” and vice versa, Gautschi said.

— The master’s in business analytics will prepare students to make the most of various technologies to help businesses analyze data and make enterprise-wide decisions. These technologies are “widely believed to be woefully underutilized in terms of their capability,” Gautschi said.

— The master’s in media entrepreneurship, inspired by New York City’s “silicon alley” of new digital media enterprises, will focus on business models in new media. According to industry, Gautschi said, “there are way too many people who have great technological ideas but don’t have the business acumen, or basic grounding, to understand how to exploit those technologies commercially.”

These follow the four master’s programs begun last year: the master’s in business enterprise, the master’s in investor relations, the master’s in global finance, and the three-continent master’s in global management, or 3CMGM, a one-year program that includes study tours in Europe, India and New York City. Click here for a list of current master’s programs.

In other efforts, the school is building stronger ties with alumni and other constituencies through the Alumni Student Career Alliance, the Fordham Wall Street Council, and the Flaum Leadership Lecture Series. The school is building its social media presence and has sent lots of e-mails—in all, 150,000—to students, faculty, staff and alumni over the past year.

He detailed various international ventures such as the Fordham Future of Business series, launched in January in partnership with King’s College in London, which brings together senior executives in different parts of the world to discuss where business is going. The first session, held in London in January, will be followed by one in Turkey in March, and meetings in New York and Jerusalem in June. The school is planning to build partnerships in Africa as well, and will take part in a conference in Johannesburg in 2013, Gautschi said.

These efforts are essential for getting the kind of knowledge that just can’t be gained by reading periodicals, he said. “It helps to actually know people in different parts of the world in order to understand what’s going on,” he said. “We see this as a way to inspire us to innovate.”