In a candid talk on Sept. 6 with the 2017 freshman class of the Gabelli School of Business, Mario J. Gabelli, chairman and CEO of GAMCO Investors, shared some of the secrets to his success.

Here are some of the self-made billionaire investor’s tips on how tomorrow’s leaders can use the next four years of their lives at Fordham as a stepping stone in the business world.

1. Accumulate knowledge

Whether he’s analyzing earnings-call transcripts, gathering insights from international analysts on his team, surveying the automotive industry, or getting to know executives affecting change, Gabelli is driven by intensive research. “What I do and our team does is assess talent—just like you’re assessing your professors and benefiting from their wisdom,” said Gabelli, who serves on the executive committee of the President’s Council at Fordham. “Learn about a business. Learn what makes it work, whether it’s a convenience gas station, investment business, or private equity firm. Learn the details.”

2. Learn to think

“Education is the great leveler, the engine of America’s meritocracy,” Gabelli said in 2010 after making a $25 million gift to school that now bears his name. For Gabelli, who graduated in 1965, that still rings true today. He encouraged students to view college as a testing ground for critical thinking. “The more you learn, the more flexible you’ll become, and the better off you’ll be,” he said. “Learn to think about what your options are, how you can execute them, and maximize the time that you’re here.”

3. Repurpose your fears

Fear is one of the biggest inhibitors of success, yet Gabelli has used his fears—of making mistakes, missing opportunities, and not getting details right—as motivators in his financial career. In fact, when he founded GAMCO Investors in 1977, it wasn’t the most opportune time to start a firm given the turbulent economy. “Everybody said, ‘You shouldn’t start a firm,’ and they probably were right, but that’s OK,” he said, telling the graduates to experience things for themselves and do what they love.

4. Get in the game

Although Gabelli is one of the country’s highest ranked money managers, the Bronx-born executive said he didn’t know anything about Wall Street until he got a job in his teens at a golf course frequented by financial analysts. “I decided to buy stocks at an early age,” he said. “And even when I went to high school and college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I had exposure. So my recommendation is to get on the bus. Buy a stock. Get into the game, and then figure out who you’re going to call.”

5. Live in the future

Looking ahead is crucial in the financial industry, according to Gabelli, who invests in stocks at prices below their intrinsic values. “In anything you do in business or in life, don’t look at what things are doing today,” he said. “Look at where they are going to be a year from now or 10 years from now. Where are you going to be, and how do you position yourself to take advantage of that?” Ultimately, Gabelli, whose firm has also backed environmental, social, and governance investments, said it’s all about giving back. “You want to participate not only in what you’re doing for the planet, but [also in]returning what you have.”

What was your first impression of your campus?
Maria (Rose Hill): I originally wanted to go to Lincoln Center, but I ended up loving Rose Hill. I like that Fordham is one school with two campuses.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): I knew I wanted to be in the city. I liked that Lincoln Center is in Manhattan but has a plaza in the middle so we’re all connected.

What’s your favorite thing about your sister’s campus?
Maria (Rose Hill): Obviously my sister is at Lincoln Center, so I love it for that. I take the Ram Van down, and then we just hop on the subway and go wherever we need to go.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): The cafeteria. They have smoothies that we don’t have here.

What’s your major? 
Maria (Rose Hill): I actually just recently decided I want to do a communications major with a business minor.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): I’m really not sure, but hopefully by next year I’ll have it figured out. When I applied I thought communications, but I’m still undecided.

What’s your favorite class so far?
Maria (Rose Hill): The Texts and Contexts class I’m taking right now: Women in Early Modern Drama, with Professor Boyda Johnstone.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): Fundamentals of Communication and Media Studies, with Professor Kevin Gotkin. He made the class really interesting.

Are you in any clubs on campus?
Maria (Rose Hill): I’m Greek, so I’m part of Hellenic Society, which is the Greek club. We recently had Greek Night, so my sister and I got to dance in that.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): FLASH magazine combines my love of media and fashion. I’m also in Hellenic Society. And I really want to go on a Global Outreach project.

What has your most rewarding experience been during your first year?
Maria (Rose Hill): Definitely Greek Night; it was so much fun.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): Living on my own and having to do things for myself, like buying food and doing laundry.

What’s your favorite thing to do on your days off? 
Maria (Rose Hill): I would say sleep, but I feel like Arianna would say that. Other than that, watch Netflix
Arianna (Lincoln Center): Sleep.

What’s the most touristy thing you’ve done in New York?
Maria (Rose Hill): Broadway. My favorite show right now is Dear Evan Hansen.
Arianna (Lincoln Center): Probably going to Top of the Rock or to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

—Emily Mendez

Jon Friedrich, PhD, professor of chemistry
I’m reading Lab Girl (Knopf, 2016) by Hope Jahren, a geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Hawaii. Jahren reflects on the joys, frustrations, and wonders of becoming and being a scientist, and her explorations of plants and their ecosystems are truly thought provoking. I would recommend it to any aspiring scientist.

Linda LoSchiavo, director of Fordham University Libraries
In his novel Time and Again (Simon & Schuster, 1970) Jack Finney employs time travel to move his main character to New York in the 1880s. While it is both a sci-fi and a mystery novel, Finney’s detailed description of the city, accompanied by period photographs and illustrations, is a history lesson in itself. He shows us the fragility, pain, strength, and wonder of New York.

Brian Johnson, PhD, assistant professor of philosophy
My recommendation is Plato’s Apology, which is Plato’s version of the speech given by Socrates as he defended himself in 399 B.C. The book includes the key ideas we want out of a college education—the examined life—and fits with Fordham’s focus on classical texts.

Mark Naison, PhD, professor of history and African and African American studies
Between The World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is a short book in the form of a black journalist’s letter to his son. It is perhaps the best window we have into the mindset of black parents trying to raise children in a world that still poses dangers and challenges most of their white counterparts won’t face. The book eloquently exposes why black people still feel vulnerable in a “post-racial society.”

Benjamin Cole, PhD, associate professor of business
I recommend Global Dexterity (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013), by Andy Molinsky. Most books on cultural differences focus on little things like whether to bow or shake hands when meeting people. But to work successfully in highly diverse cultural groups, you must understand how people from other cultures may diverge from your own. For example, does your culture require talking up your accomplishments to show competency? In the United States, yes; in Japan, absolutely not. The book shows how to be “true to yourself” yet not “sell out” when working with persons from other cultures.

Orit Avishai, PhD, associate professor of sociology and anthropology
I recommend Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science (Penguin, 2015), by Alice Dreger. It surveys recent scientific controversies gone nasty, replete with warring activists, censorship, and outrageous personal accusations meant to undermine legitimate research (including that by Dreger herself). The book will help prepare students for their twin responsibilities of accumulating knowledge and figuring out how to use it to make the world better.

Mary Bly, PhD, professor of English
Julia Claiborne Johnson’s debut novel, Be Frank with Me (William Morrow, 2016), is the story of young woman, Alice, whose boss sends her to Hollywood to be an assistant to an eccentric, brilliant writer, Mimi. Alice is tasked with doing everything she can to help Mimi produce a second bestseller, including caring for her quirky 9-year-old son Frank. It is a fascinating, witty, beautifully written first novel and wonderful inspiration for aspiring novelists.

Frank Boyle, PhD, associate professor of English
I just finished reading The Seven Good Years. a memoir by the Israeli author, Etgar Keret. It is unlike any memoir I’ve ever read because it is written in the style of Keret’s often stunning short stories that are never much longer than three or four pages. If you don’t know Keret’s work, the short story collection to begin with is certainly The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God.  Deceptively simple and fantastically quirky, Keret’s stories send the mind reeling through the relentless contradictions that add up to make us human. 

(Book covers courtesy Knopf, Penguin, and William Morrow publishers.) 

For Timothy Shriver, an educator, author, entrepreneur, and chairman of the Special Olympics, the mental health crisis affecting so many young people cannot be ignored by the institutions of higher education where they study.The solution lies not in teaching students to do more, but in teaching them to do less, said Shriver. In fact, it is in teaching them to do nothing—that is, to engage in contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation and sitting in silence as a means of gaining greater self-awareness.

On April 27 at Fordham Law School, Shriver shared his views on implementing contemplative practices into higher education in conversation with faculty members, administrators, students, members of the Jesuit community, and other invited guests. The event was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Joined by his wife, Linda, and their daughter, Caroline, a freshman at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Shriver extolled the experience of silence as a means through which one can combat depression and anxiety by encountering the true self and coming to self-acceptance.

“The silence that has come to us from contemplative practice can be . . . a source of direct experience of one’s goodness,” he said.

“The primary vector of discovery is of your own self judgment. And when you finally start to unmask your own judgment, you get to the point where you can see a little more clearly.”

Shriver addressed the fact that though so many religious traditions have contemplative practices at their root, these techniques are rarely offered as a means of coping with day-to-day problems.

“If we are looking at people who are so hungry for a sense of their own beauty and goodness, why is it that we haven’t created a developmental path using the resources of our religious traditions, translating them into contemporary practice to allow young people to access them?” he asked.

Fordham community members agreed with Shriver that there is a great hunger among students for classes and experiences that help them connect with their inner selves.

Father Jose-Luis Salazar, SJ, executive director of Campus Ministry, said that all of the retreat programs offered each year are overbooked.

Stephen Grimm, PhD, associate professor of philosophy who teaches a course called Philosophy as a Way of Life, said that it filled up “in seconds.”

For Shriver, who has a master’s degree in religion and religious education, a doctoral degree in education, and who worked for 15 years in the New Haven, Connecticut, public school system, the benefits of contemplative practice are clear.

“All the data suggests that integrating ‘the pause’—whatever we want to call it—increases academic achievement, decreases psychopathology, and increases positives states and satisfaction across the board,” he said.

Shriver’s book, Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most (Crichton 2014), recounts his own spiritual journey and his work with the Special Olympics.

–Nina Heidig