Mo Osman, FCRH ’14, received the Trailblazer Award, which recognizes a graduate from the past 10 years whose leadership is an inspiration to their fellow alumni, and Jack Walton, FCRH ’72, and Jeanette Walton, TMC ’71, GSAS ’73, shared in the Ram of the Year Award as alumni who enhance the reputation of the University through their professional achievements, personal accomplishments, and loyal service to Fordham. They’re the first duo to be so honored.

The event marked the third biennial awards ceremony hosted by the Fordham University Alumni Association (FUAA), a dues-free group established in 2017 to unite alumni from all of Fordham’s schools. As alumni and guests mingled in the Penn Club’s second-floor ballroom, they were treated to the mellow sounds of the Fordham Lincoln Center Jazz Ensemble, playing from a small overhead balcony.

The Wednesday evening event featured a few firsts, too: It was the first time the reception was held in the landmark Beaux-Arts building that houses the Penn Club, which Fordham alumni and employees are now eligible to join. And it was the first FUAA reception for Fordham’s new president, Tania Tetlow, who has been busy on the road since last August, meeting with alumni across the U.S. and abroad. Alumni have been getting to know her on home turf, too: At homecoming last year, Sally Benner, chair of the FUAA Advisory Board, moderated a fireside-style chat with the president.

At the reception, Tetlow said that it’s a blessing to be able to look at the alumni community and see what Fordham “students will someday become.” She thanked attendees for the “lives of integrity that you have led, the impact you have had on the world, and the ways that you have mattered. It’s such a joy to know what these seeds we plant will become.”

Similarly, Michael Griffin, associate vice president for alumni relations and executive director of the FUAA, told attendees that his goal is to “engage as many of you as possible in a relationship that’s lifelong and meaningful.”

Education as a Gateway into Society

Upon receiving the Ram of the Year Award, Jeannette Walton said she and her husband, Jack, were “humbled to have been selected” by their peers, and they accepted the honor “in the name of all the alumni who worked so hard for Fordham and to support the students there.” She added that they have been devoted to Fordham for so long because they believe that education is important “not just for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren, but for every student who wants to learn and become a productive member of society.”

The Waltons met in the Fordham yearbook office during the late 1960s, when she was enrolled at Thomas More College (then Fordham’s liberal arts school for women), he at Fordham College at Rose Hill. She grew up in the Bronx, he in Ohio; she had a career in medical research, he in finance. In the ‘70s, they were married, and they’ve stayed close to Fordham through the years: Two of their three sons—Robert, GABELLI ’01, and Andrew, FCRH ’05—went on to graduate from the University.

“I can’t tell you how flattered we are,” Jack said. “I thank you immensely. We were a little bit reluctant because we didn’t know what we had done to deserve the award.”

Humility has been a common trait among FUAA award winners over the years, but there should be no confusion over why their fellow graduates nominated the Waltons: For decades, they have been sharing their time and resources to help make Catholic education more accessible to underserved populations.

They established the Walton Scholarship Fund to provide financial aid to high-achieving undergraduates. They were the principal benefactors of the statue of St. Ignatius Loyola at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses and the Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam organ in the University Church. They also helped restore Rose Hill’s science labs and founded the John C. and Jeanette D. Walton Lecture in Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Fordham.

Before presenting them with the award, Benner thanked the Waltons “for your daily examples of expressing love for Fordham, which has added up to decades of loyalty that all of us could emulate.”

‘Grandmasters of Benevolence’

Osman was so surprised he’d been chosen by his peers that he didn’t quite grasp what he was being told.

“When I called Mo to let him know he was selected as the Trailblazer awardee, at first he thought I was inviting him tonight so we could all vote the slate of candidates live, like it was American Idol,” Benner joked.

Osman, the director of alternatives at Wellington Management, immigrated to the Bronx with his family when he was a child, after fleeing Sudan amid military unrest when he was just 3 years old. Today, he’s grateful to Fordham for the impact it’s had on his life. He earned a degree in economics, completed several internships, and landed a position in a two-year rotational program at JPMorgan right after graduating in 2014. He was able to afford Fordham with financial aid and support from the Higher Education Opportunity Program. And that’s why, he’s said, it’s important to him to pay it forward to other students like him.

Since graduating nine years ago, he’s helped strengthen the University’s alumni network by contributing to scholarship funds; sponsoring receptions for his fellow alumni; participating in events run by MOSAIC, Fordham’s Multicultural Organization Supporting Alumni Initiatives and Community affinity chapter; and helping to launch the Alumni Career Fair as an inaugural member of the FUAA Advisory Board.

As he accepted his award, Osman encouraged his fellow alumni to remember what he feels is one of Fordham’s greatest lessons: to make a positive impact on the world. He asked them to “continue to be the great grandmasters of benevolence, respect, and also remain charitable.”

“Without your philanthropy, I would not be here today,” he said. “There are many more kids who would love a Fordham education, who have the potential to attend this great institution of ours, but just need that little push.”

Nominated by their fellow alumni, the award winners were selected by the FUAA Advisory Board. The Ram of the Year Award honors alumni who enhance the reputation of the University through their professional achievements, personal accomplishments, and loyal service to Fordham, and the Trailblazer Award is given to a graduate from the past 10 years who has demonstrated outstanding dedication to Fordham and whose leadership has inspired fellow alumni.

Ensuring College Isn’t a Luxury

Osman, the director of alternatives at Wellington Management, previously served as associate and global alternatives product specialist at JPMorgan Asset Management. He was able to afford Fordham with financial aid and support from the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP). And that’s why it’s important to him to pay it forward to other students like him.

“I owe a lot to Fordham, and that’s why I give back however I can,” he told Fordham Magazine in 2020. “There’s a kid in my shoes out there, a kid from the Bronx who isn’t afforded the luxury of being able to pay for college, and that sucks. We should be able to help them out.”

Osman and his family settled in the Bronx when he was a child, having fled Sudan amid military unrest when he was just 3 years old. Today, he’s grateful to Fordham for the “profound impact” it’s had on his life.

“The University has helped mold me into who I am today,” he said. “I can trace my professional success back to that Jesuit curriculum and to my first work-study job at Walsh Library.”

Since graduating, Osman has remained close to the University, by sponsoring receptions for Fordham alumni who work at JPMorgan, for example, serving as a member of the FUAA Advisory Board, and helping launch the Alumni Career Fair.

Osman said he is “deeply grateful for this recognition” and is indebted to Fordham’s faculty and staff for being so dedicated to his “education and personal growth.

“Without their encouragement and belief in me, I would not have been able to accomplish all that I have,” he said.

Cementing Future Opportunity

For decades, the Waltons have been proponents of Catholic education, generously donating their time and resources to make it more accessible to underserved populations.

Jeanette, a native Bronxite, said the Catholic Church shaped her early years, in particular. “[We] didn’t have a lot of money, we didn’t have a lot of the extras, so your life really centered around the church because the church had … all kinds of things,” like an afterschool program, free lunch, and more, she told Fordham’s Bronx Italian American History Initiative in 2019.

After graduating from Cardinal Spellman High School in 1967, she enrolled in Thomas More College, then Fordham’s undergraduate school for women. She earned a B.S. in biology in 1971, and two years later, added an M.S. in the subject from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. As an undergraduate, she worked on the yearbook staff, eventually becoming editor-in-chief. That’s where she met Jack. She was a sophomore, and he was a first-year student from Ohio, where he had attended St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland.

They were married in the 1970s, and they have stayed close to Fordham through the decades. Two of their three sons—Robert, GABELLI ’01, and Andrew, FCRH ’05—followed in their Fordham footsteps, each earning a degree from the University. And Jack has served as president of the Fordham College Alumni Association.

In 2012, he and Jeanette founded the John C. and Jeanette D. Walton Lecture in Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Fordham “to address the complex issues at the intersection” of the three subjects “in conversations that reach beyond the confines of academia.”

Members of the Archbishop Hughes Society, a group of Fordham’s most magnanimous donors, their support has enriched the University community in numerous ways. They are the principal benefactors of the statue of St. Ignatius Loyola at the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses, as well as of the Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam organ in the University Church. They have contributed to the restoration of science labs at Rose Hill, and in 2017 they established the Walton Scholarship Fund, which provides financial aid to high-achieving undergraduates who might otherwise be unable to continue attending Fordham.

A few years ago, the Waltons hosted a presidential reception in Ohio, and they have long been involved in planning Jubilee reunion activities, including outreach to fellow alumni. Jack has served as co-chair of all the reunions of his class since graduating, including his 50th last June.

At the Golden Rams Dinner and Soiree on Friday evening, June 3, he told Fordham News that his fondest Fordham memory was commencement, when he earned a B.S. in chemistry that would enable him to pursue a successful career.

“I felt so lucky to be getting my degree because it was not a given,” he said. “Well, in my mind it was a given, but I still felt very, very lucky.”

This year’s FUAA Recognition Reception will be held on Wednesday, January 18, at the Penn Club of New York from 6 to 8 p.m. Register for the reception on Forever Fordham.

The annual event recognizes alumni volunteers and helps further the FUAA’s mission to foster lifelong connections among alumni and promote a sense of general goodwill and support for Fordham worldwide.

Sally Benner, FCRH ’84, chair of the FUAA Advisory Board, introduced new and returning board members, 24 volunteers who represent the University’s 200,000-plus global alumni worldwide. They include graduates from 10 Fordham schools, including Marymount and Thomas More College, and their class years span six decades. Quoting another graduate, Benner said the group aims “to serve as connective tissue—to connect us to each other, to connect you to the University, and to connect the University to you.”

As she spoke about the Fordham community and its commitment to cura personalis, or care for the whole person, Benner noted that the alumni were gathering during a week in which “the world commemorates the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.”—and less than two weeks after a fire killed 17 people and injured dozens of others in the Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx, a mere 15-minute walk from the Rose Hill campus.

She shared how she is motivated by a quote from King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “’We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects us all indirectly,’” she said, quoting King. “Tonight, I ask our alumni community to consider care for the whole person to include care for our communities.”

Benner encouraged alumni to seek out Julie Gafney, Ph.D., executive director of the University’s Center for Community Engaged Learning, who was in attendance with a list, now posted on the center’s Instagram account, of how victims of the fire felt the Fordham community could offer support.

“If you have the means to share your abundance, by contributing your skills or good fortune to help, you will learn how the largely Gambian community would value it most,” Benner said.

A Legacy of Transformation

This year’s FUAA reception also marked the last one for Joseph M. McShane, S.J., before he steps down as president of Fordham in June. Throughout the evening, on a big screen behind the ballroom stage, the FUAA featured a slideshow highlighting the University’s transformation under his leadership since 2003. Prior to the event, attendees had an opportunity to submit their own personal tributes and memorable McShane moments, which were included in the slideshow.

During his own speech, Father McShane thanked Benner, who stepped into her role as chair just this year, for “organizing us this evening and doing it with her characteristic class.”

He also remarked on the University’s strength as it continues to navigate the pandemic, noting that the Class of 2025 is “the largest, most diverse, and brightest class in Fordham’s 180-year history,” and that 2021 was the “best fundraising year” in the University’s history, thanks to the “extraordinary generosity” of alumni and others who invested more than $84 million in the University and its mission.

“We didn’t just get through,” he said. “Fordham came through with great strength because it was true to its sense of mission, and its mission and its heart is a mission that is based on love and directed toward the cultivation of all the gifts that students have—cura personalis, in other words.”

The FUAA is always looking to connect with new voices from the University’s alumni community. For info on its upcoming events or to learn more, visit Forever Fordham.

“I said, ‘Of course you are. You’re part of the University.’ We were laughing, but it emphasized for me that perhaps there isn’t a [strong]  sense of belonging [among graduate school alumni], and we want to work on that.”

Hence her mission as the new chair of the Fordham University Alumni Association’s (FUAA) Advisory Board. Benner, who graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1984 and previously served as the board’s vice chair, will be taking over for John Pettenati, FCRH ’81, the FUAA’s founding chair, in January. And when she does, she wants to unite all University alumni, all around the world, during her four-year term.

During this year’s Homecoming celebration, members of the FUAA ­gathered for a toast to recognize the advisory board’s ongoing work and commitment to the University. During the event, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, recognized all that Benner has contributed to Fordham thus far. “You brought in grit, courage, determination, and you never lost it,” he said. “You brought it to Fordham. You endowed Fordham with your enthusiasm.”

Referencing Benner’s undergraduate involvement with Mimes and Mummers, the theater group at Rose Hill, Pettenati added, “I know how passionate she was about that organization: She’s going to bring that passion to the FUAA.”

Benner said she has been thinking about how to stay engaged with Fordham almost since she graduated, and her leadership role on the advisory board enables her to get involved on a deeper level.

A Buffalo, New York, native, Benner said that in the ’80s, she was one of relatively few students from outside the New York metropolitan area. In recent decades, Fordham has transformed itself from a strong regional institution to a prestigious national university.

As board president, Benner plans to offer FUAA programming and events designed to unite all University alumni, particularly those who tend to think only of their affiliation with a particular campus, or with an undergraduate or graduate school, or who live beyond the New York metro area. “The thing we have in common is Fordham University; that’s what’s printed on each of our degrees,” she said. “Once you’ve graduated, you are in the world, and you wear lots of hats. You’re not your major.”

Benner added that although many of us have Zoom fatigue after being in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic for nearly two years, online programming has afforded alumni who live outside the New York metropolitan area far more opportunities to get more involved with their alma mater. She’s optimistic that it will continue to be “a portal through which alumni can stay involved and feel that they have a role—that they can volunteer in some capacity from where they are.”

Benner’s first six months in office will put her mission to the test, with both virtual and in-person events planned for all alumni. The fifth annual FUAA Alumni Recognition Reception will be held on January 20 in the ballroom at the historic 583 Park Avenue. Created by the advisory board’s networking and engagement task force, the reception hasn’t been held in person since 2020. (Last year, it was held virtually.)

And Forever Learning Week, planned by the Forever Learning task force to offer alumni “master classes taught at Fordham,” will kick off on March 28. Last year, the programming was offered virtually throughout April. “Hundreds of alumni from around the world dialed in,” Benner said. “It was fascinating because it was the mosaic of all the parts that make up Fordham.”

In addition to uniting alumni across schools, Benner hopes that she’ll be able to unite alumni across experiences, too, recognizing that Fordham is a different university than the one she attended—but in the best possible ways.

“We’ll all have different experiences, increasingly diverse experiences, more cosmopolitan experiences,” she said. “But we are all from Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York. We have New York in common. So, whatever our generation, whatever our school or campus, we’ve got that to open the door. That’s our calling card to have something in common.”

What are you most passionate about?
Doing all that I can to open doors to opportunity for others.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Some decisions make themselves.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
In New York, anyplace where the Chrysler Building is within view. In the world, in Paris, sitting on the Seine River’s stone embankment watching boats and people of the world glide by while imagining scenes from history play out in that setting.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (HarperTorch, 1974) by Robert M. Pirsig

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you remember most?
English professor Richard Giannone because his syllabus introduced me to the writing of the masterful author Joan Didion.

What are you optimistic about?
That whatever our troubles are in whatever our era, solutions can be forged by the handiwork of people coming together sincerely to find a common cause.