When he didn’t make either team’s roster, he set his sights on a career in law enforcement like his father, a police officer. He enrolled at St. John’s and soon found himself in a required first-year philosophy course.

“I approached my professor and I said, ‘Why do I have to take philosophy? I want to work for the FBI,’” Hughes recalls. “Lo and behold, I fell in love with philosophy. It absolutely grabbed me. And then, the same thing happened with theology.”

That passion for the humanities would not only inspire Hughes to pursue several graduate degrees, but it would inform the way he approached his non-academic career—first in the FBI and then as a lawyer. And that connection between studying the humanities and discovering a range of possible career paths is something he hopes to share with students as part of the Graduate School of Arts and Science’s GSAS Futures, a program that promotes career pathway preparation for Fordham graduate students across the arts and sciences.

Beginning Graduate Studies, and Shifting from the FBI to a Lawyer

After graduating from St. John’s, Hughes landed that dream job with the FBI, working in the agency’s foreign counterintelligence division, where he received a commendation from the agency’s director for “a security matter of great interest to the bureau and the nation.”

But he also had plenty of free time when he wasn’t working, and he decided to fill it by pursuing a master’s degree in theology at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

“It was a great school, a perfect place to study theology,” he says. “It was a very enlightening experience, and I had some great professors.”

He says Transcendental Thomism, a course taught by longtime Fordham philosophy professor Gerald McCool, S.J., who died in 2005, had a “tremendous impact” on him.

After completing his master’s at Fordham, and while still balancing his work at the FBI, Hughes earned a master’s degree in philosophy from Columbia, followed by a law degree from New York Law School. With his J.D. in hand, Hughes left the FBI and began his career as a lawyer, first as a law clerk to a federal judge, and then as appellate counsel for several law firms and as the deputy solicitor general for the New York state attorney general’s downstate appeals and opinions bureau.

Just over 21 years ago, Hughes began working at the Greater New York Mutual Insurance Company, where he currently serves as executive vice president & general counsel, corporate secretary. In that role, he oversees all of the company’s corporate legal activities and regulatory matters. He also finds himself working closely with, among others, the claims, personnel, and underwriting departments.

With all his success as an attorney in the public and private sectors, Hughes says his graduate studies—including an L.L.M. from the NYU School of Law and a second master’s in philosophy from the New School—have been essential to the way he approaches legal cases and his general counsel responsibilities.

“[When]  I wrote briefs and I argued them before the appeals court, there’s no question that the philosophical and theological framing factored into how I viewed and presented legal issues,” Hughes says. “Attorneys with whom I interact many times will tell me they appreciate talking to me about the law because I often frame issues and arguments from a different perspective. They like the fact that they get a different perspective on the law, and on other ways of looking at legal issues.”

Continuing to Study, and to Teach

Just last month, Hughes successfully defended his dissertation, earning a Ph.D. in philosophy from the New School.

He has also continued teaching his metaphysics class at St. John’s, where he continues to encourage students to keep an open mind about philosophy even though it is seemingly unrelated to their majors or career goals.

“I am heartened to see my students showing an interest in philosophy that they might not have otherwise shown had someone not told them that courses like philosophy could represent something more to them than simply an academic requirement for school,” he says. “I get a great reward out of seeing this realization in the students.”

One might wonder how Hughes has managed to balance his high-pressure, full-time legal work with his lifelong commitment to learning and teaching. He says it all comes down to passion and a sense of vocation.

“I don’t think you can do all this unless you truly love the things you are studying,” he says. “Over my career I’ve worked an average of 12 hours a day. It’s not just a nine-to-five kind of existence. I have a very loving family that always supports me, which has afforded me the opportunity to pursue my career goals and my studies.

“With the exception of the law degrees, I didn’t have to earn all these degrees, but I did it because I actually love studying philosophy and thinking philosophically. When you love doing something, it makes it a lot easier to do it.”

Fordham in the Family

Hughes’ connections to Fordham have only grown in the years since he studied at GSAS. One daughter, Kathleen, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 2014 and received her M.S.T. from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) the following year. His youngest daughter, Brittany, is currently in her final semester of GSE’s five-year integrated teacher education track, which will result in an M.S.T. degree this May.

In addition to becoming involved with GSAS Futures, Hughes also serves on the GSAS Dean’s Leadership Committee. He says that when he spoke to GSAS Dean Tyler Stovall, Ph.D., about his involvement, he was struck by Stovall’s immediate grasp of the connections between studying theology and philosophy and a successful legal career—and that this shared view of academic pursuits only strengthened his commitment to being an engaged member of the GSAS alumni community.

“I was so taken aback—in a good way—when the dean told me why he had set up a meeting with me,” Hughes says. “I think what Dean Stovall is doing is fabulous. I immediately told him that I’m willing to put in whatever time it takes to do whatever I can for Fordham, for the dean, and for the students.”

This more numbers-focused branch of the field, along with an interest in how resources, capital, and labor moved throughout the world economy, led Woodard to spend more time analyzing markets and investments.

“One of the ways that I found my way into finance was through curiosity about political philosophy and issues around global justice,” Woodard says. “One of the things that you talk about if you’re talking about John Rawls or Karl Marx or other political philosophers is questions of justice and distribution. And so I got more and more interested in learning macroeconomics and learning about how global markets worked.”

Woodard, who earned a master’s degree in theology from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland before enrolling at Fordham, believes that the breadth and plurality of Fordham’s philosophy department made this kind of shift in focus possible, noting that its emphasis on history and interdisciplinary thought made it unique among doctoral programs.

“I think they were one of the relatively few philosophy departments that still had their students take comprehensive exams covering the whole history of philosophy, from the ancients all the way through to the modern time,” Woodard recalls. “The requirement to be familiar with ancient philosophy and medieval philosophy, as well as modern and contemporary periods, meant that we were able to understand the common threads and through lines that have driven human inquiry throughout the ages,” a skill that plays out in his analysis of market trends and their context.

Building a Career, Finding Optimism

While pursuing his doctorate and with his growing interest in global markets, Woodard founded both Condor Options, a firm where he tested investment strategies on large data sets, as well as the publication Expiring Monthly, where he wrote about research into options and volatility trading strategies. This experience led him to post-Ph.D. jobs as a senior equity derivatives strategist at BGC Partners and a global investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. His current role, which he began in October 2019, is as head of the research investment committee at Bank of America.

“My task is to help investors think about where to allocate their investments toward different asset classes, like stocks or bonds,” Woodard explains. “And to do that, a big part of my job is to try to make sense of what’s happening in the global economy and in the global market.”

While 2020 has presented challenges, including economic volatility, in the U.S. and throughout the world, Woodard says that there is reason for optimism when it comes to financial markets.

“There are so many people who are eager to make a contribution,” he says. “And if you get help to the people who need it, if you get resources to the students who want to learn, and training to the workers who want to work, I’m incredibly optimistic about the potential of the United States as an economy and as a culture.

“One of our big themes in our department is on the shift from globalization to more local and regional forms of production,” he adds, “being more thoughtful about where we produce things and how we produce them and who produces them. And if those trends continue and you start to see this more thoughtful shift … they can have some really positive implications for markets and investments.”

Maintaining Connections and Offering Help

Woodard has stayed involved with Fordham as a member of the Dean’s Leadership Committee at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and he has come back to campus to speak to students about postgraduate career paths beyond academia. He has also stayed in touch with a number of his professors and friends made through the program, including Joseph Koterski, S.J., associate professor of philosophy and editor in chief of International Philosophical Quarterly.

“Whether it’s the priests on campus or the faculty, I think that there are some connections that were deep enough that I’ve been really fortunate to maintain,” Woodard says. “Current students will reach out from time to time, whether for advice or connections, and I’m always happy to help in that way when I can.”

Now in its fourth year and formerly known as the Women’s Philanthropy Summit, the Oct. 21 event offers alumnae, faculty, and friends a chance to discuss and celebrate their achievements and attend professional and personal development sessions.

Byrne, a clinical psychologist practicing in Eastchester, New York, will lead one of those sessions, along with Maria Nardone, GSAS ’79, ’82, and David Marcotte, S.J., Ph.D. During “Building Personal Resilience: Yes I Can! Yes We Can!” she said she’ll address the importance of taking responsibility for what we can control in life, and encourage attendees to “find meaning and satisfaction in seeking to do the right thing, even when it is difficult to do so.”

A Legacy of Giving Back

This is the first year that Byrne has been involved with the Women’s Summit, but she’s no stranger to volunteering her time in service of the University. An alumna of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), where she earned a doctorate in psychology, Byrne has served on the GSAS Advisory Board and been a member of the Dean’s Leadership Committee (DLC) for about 15 years.

In a normal year, that would mean attending annual meetings on campus and several other in-person events throughout the year. But this year, those gatherings are being conducted virtually, and Byrne, who serves on the nominating committee for new members of the Dean’s Leadership Committee, said she still enjoys talking with “other graduates of GSAS who are enthusiastic about the school and joining DLC.”

She’s also involved with the new GSAS wellness initiative, which offers “various types of support to graduate students, including counseling, social support, and career guidance.” For now, much of that support, which is also targeted to combat stress related to COVID-19, is delivered virtually.

While the pandemic has certainly changed her responsibilities a bit, her desire to “pay it forward”—sometimes literally—has not. As someone whose three Fordham degrees were largely funded through scholarships and grants, Byrne said that she “always knew that once I was able to do so,” she would contribute to Fordham.

“My husband and I made the lead contribution for a scholarship in honor of Marvin Reznikoff, who mentored my Ph.D. and also walked me down the aisle when I got married,” she said.

Byrne and her husband established the scholarship in 2009 to support doctoral candidates in psychology and honor Reznikoff, who died in 2013. (She has also shared her love of Fordham with her son John Rogan, FCRH ’10, LAW ’14, a two-time Fordham grad who is currently a visiting clinical professor of law at the Fordham School of Law.)

Byrne may have known early on that she wanted to give back to Fordham, but she didn’t always know she wanted to be a psychologist. A few years after graduating from Thomas More College (Fordham’s liberal arts college for women from 1964 to 1974), she decided “that being a psychologist would be interesting and engaging and also a worthwhile career to pursue.” Now, at her private practice in Westchester County, Byrne works mostly with adult women who have depression or anxiety disorders.

“I was amazed at how quickly my patients and I adjusted to the phone and how well therapy has been going for most people,” she said. “During the shutdown, I think people had more time to focus on therapy issues between sessions so that they made better progress in therapy.”

During the Women’s Summit, Byrne and her fellow panelists will delve into that trend, teaching attendees how to develop and maintain resilience in these uncertain times.

“We have to accept the circumstances of life that we cannot change and find meaning in how we choose to respond to those circumstances,” she said. “To [paraphrase]Victor Frankl: It is not about what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.”

Fordham Five (Plus One)

What are you most passionate about?
Motherhood is the thing I have been most passionate about. I have two young-adult sons and nurturing and watching them grow from birth onward is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The best piece of advice I have been given came from my best friend in high school. She suggested that it would be a good idea to get a Jesuit education. I went to Fordham, and that decision has had a tremendous positive impact on my life.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite place in New York City is on the Staten Island Ferry with the view of the Statue of Liberty, the skyline, and the harbor. My favorite place in the world is Robert Moses State Park on the beach.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
My favorite book is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl wrote this book after surviving three years in Nazi concentration camps. His message is that while we cannot always control the circumstances of our life, we can control how we respond to those circumstances. It is up to us to figure out how to act responsibly and find meaning in life—even when that process is demanding and challenging and involves suffering.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
My mentor Marvin Reznikoff is the Fordham professor I admire the most. He was a distinguished, talented academic who gave wonderful guidance and made the dissertation process as easy as possible. More importantly, he was an honorable, very kind, and attentive person who was a great model for what a psychologist should be.