Photos by Dana MaxsonFordham’s Gabelli School of Business rolled out the red carpet for its highest achievers on May 16 at its annual Awards Night celebration at the Rose Hill campus.

The ceremony, which took place in the McGinley Center’s student lounge, brought together about 400 students, faculty, administrators, friends and families, who sat on three sides of a stage.

Speaking to graduating seniors at the McGinley Center Ballroom, Dean Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., implored them to remember the helpers in their lives. The notion that one can be successful all on their own is a lie, she said.

It’s also useful to remember organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s theory that people are generally givers, takers, or matchers, she said. We vacillate between the three at different points in the day, but in general, those who gravitate toward one specific model are more successful.

“In business, you might think it’s the takers: Hard-charging, take-no-prisoners types who pull themselves to the top no matter what. Or you might think it’s the matchers: People who master the delicate negotiation of ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours.’ But it’s not. It’s the givers,” she said.

Their accomplishments are many, including jobs at the likes of Barclays, BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Chase, Blackstone, Amazon, Instagram, Adobe, BBDO, Nike, and all of the Big Four accounting firms, and Rapaccioli lauded them for being supportive of each other in hard times. Deep down, Gabelli School graduates are givers, she said.

“You have completed four years at a business school that is caring, not cutthroat. You have learned to use your business skills to advance society and the plight of others. You are interested not only in a great salary and a great apartment, but in doing something that adds good to the world,” she said.

Caroline Dahlgren, GABELLI ’11, recipient of the Alumnus of the Year Award, echoed that refrain, telling graduates that it’s now their turn to help each other. That’s how she connected with Tiffany & Co., where she is currently manager of global consumer insights, she said.

“Fordham said yes to you when you were accepted, and along the way, professors, deans, mentors, peers, coaches, parents, and maybe even some alumni said yes to you,” she said.

“But I ask now that no matter how busy you are, to find the tiniest block of time for that Fordham student who inevitably reaches out to you. Now you might say, ‘I can’t hire them, I can’t give them profound career advice—I just graduated.’ That may be true. But I ask that you not be afraid to impart even the smallest nugget of wisdom and experience with them. Its valuable. That’s the beauty of the Fordham community. We can support each other even in seemingly small ways.”

The class of 2019 featured two valedictorians, Clara Gastaldi and John Lichtmann.

Gastaldi, a finance and marketing major who minored in fashion studies and was a member of the women’s soccer team, compared her acceptance to Fordham to the U.S. welcoming her parents from Argentina 20 years ago. Her parents, she said, taught her the value of embracing the unknown with that move.

“Through hard work and dedication, they opened a world of opportunities for me and my three brothers. Whenever I had even the wildest of dreams, you always had my back and pushed me to do everything to my fullest potion,” she said, pausing to address her mother in back of the McGinley Center ballroom.

“Mom, please don’t cry.”

A “passion for fashion” that she had since she was a little girl, walking around in pink plastic high heels, led her to Fordham.

“I knew that my future was in New York. So, when the opportunity presented itself, I packed my bags, made the switch, and reported for preseason in August of 2016,” she said.

“In the same way that the United States welcomed my family, Fordham University and Fordham athletics took me in when I transferred to the Bronx from the University of Georgia, just after my freshman year, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.”

For Lichtmann, an accounting major who commuted two hours to campus from New Jersey and is pursuing an M.S. in public accounting at the Gabelli School, his time was bittersweet, tinged with the sudden loss of his mother right before Christmas his sophomore year. He was devastated, and unsure he’d be able to return to Fordham, he said.

“However, I kept faith that God would guide her safely to heaven, and I learned to trust the people around me to help adjust to my new lifestyle. I decided that I had to work harder and focus even more on school so I could make her proud,” he said.

Lichtmann was able to maintain a sense of humor as well. He joked that he was not really in any position to tell anyone what to think, because he only got to be on stage “because I was able to balance debits and credits for four years.”

“What I can tell you is, people will remember you for your actions. Opening the door for a stranger, greeting a co-worker with a hello—kindness and respect are contagious. At the end of the day, knowledge is power, but how you use that knowledge to affect lives of others is even more power,” he said.

“I hope to see a future where accountability is a virtue, dreams can become a reality through hard work, and people choose cooperation and collaboration over division.”

Capstone student awards include the Alumni Chair Award, which was given to Maxwell Lynch, the Mozilo Future Distinguished Alumnus Award, which was given to Morgan Mezzasalma, and the Dean’s Award, which was given to Amanda D’Antone.

In addition to recognizing dozens of students from the Gabelli School at Rose Hill with awards throughout the evening, the event also celebrated faculty contributions. The Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence for full-time faculty went to Stanley Veliotis, Ph.D., associate professor of accounting and taxation; the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence for adjunct faculty went to Linda Luca, adjunct professor of marketing; the Faculty Cura Personalis Award went to Nancy McCarthy, lecturer of communications and management; and the Faculty Magis Award went to Barbara Porco, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of accounting.

“Every semester, maybe five hands have gone up,” said the adjunct professor in the Gabelli School of Business. “But I use the show to identify the characters as archetypes, composites of different people you could relate to in the field in advertising.”

Luca spent more than 30 years working in advertising, retiring in 2010 as an EVP group account director for McCann-Erickson (a real agency that swallows up the fictional Sterling Cooper agency featured on the show). Even though 1980 was a full decade after the Mad Men era, it was still a time when the top echelon was populated with men of the Draper/Sterling ilk, she said. The difference, however, was that ad agencies were becoming increasingly female, with women taking on more of the managerial roles. Luca worked on accounts that included Unilever Foods, Bertolli Foods, Black & Decker, Lowe’s, Chase Bank, Cadbury Adams, MLB and Powerade (a sports drink offshoot of Coca Cola.)

As a historical account, Luca said the megahit show is ending on the cusp of an era that marked the diminishment of the small independent agency. Through the 1970s, agencies like Sterling Cooper were gobbled up by big agencies (like McCann-Erickson), leaving independent creative types like Don Draper – a big fish in a little pond– drowning in a pool of other idea men as talented as they.

“The characters on Mad Men—Don, Roger, Peggy, Joan—feel like they’ve lost their souls,” said Luca of this final season. “Now they are joining this behemoth. They’re stripped of the independence they once had and Don finds himself in a meeting with a dozen other creatives and asks, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Before one feels sympathy for Don Draper’s existential isolation, however, Luca points out that these professionals made a fortune from their buyouts; they became millionaires. Such larger agencies offered money. And opportunity, she said.

Luca said by 1980 women no longer had the challenge faced by Mad Men’s Peggy Olson, the shy secretary who transformed over seven seasons into an assertive, creative copy chief (and tough-talking single female) withstanding the male-dominated tide of ideas.

“The bosses I worked for at McCann were Peggy a decade later,” she said.

Mad Men represents a time when being an ad man meant creative freedom, and the new medium of television was reinventing product marketing in a booming economy. Much has changed in 50, even 40 years, said Luca, and the archetypes are for the most part redefined—Joan, the voluptuous redhead trapped in her own body, is gone, as women’s smarts now rule the day; Pete Campbell, the shady double-crossing account manager, has been diminished in a new era of ethics in business.

But the need still exists in marketing for the Don Drapers, she said, listing qualities that translate into success for students who aspire to work in the field: high energy, enthusiasm, strong social stills, creativity, and having integrity of an idea—a vision.

“Don Draper has this brilliance,” she said. “In advertising, you still have to have it today. That is still your ticket.”

(For more on the success of shows like Mad Men, see Fordham Magazine’s in-depth look at TV’s new golden age.)