She took an unconventional approach to her admission essay—she wrote a fictional story about how Dionne Warwick and the Psychic Friends Network predicted she would go to a school that bears her last name. “This was a time when that show was big, and when there really wasn’t a Fordham presence in California,” the San Francisco-area native explains.

Her risk paid off, and she continued to hone her writing as a communications major at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, where she wrote for The Observer. She graduated in 2001.

“At Fordham I learned to tell really good stories,” she says, “about all sorts of topics, including things out of my comfort zone.” And though she didn’t end up pursuing a journalism career, her undergraduate experience helped get her a role as a grant writer for The Salvation Army in San Francisco. “I found a career I didn’t know existed, where I am able to help nonprofits and my community,” she says. “And that’s all from a journalism standpoint, which I owe to Fordham.”

It was also at the Salvation Army that Eva first thought about getting involved with a local Fordham alumni chapter. “My boss was very involved in his college’s alumni association, and it had just never occurred to me,” she says. So she contacted the head for the Fordham Alumni Chapter of Northern California, Mark Di Giorgio, and asked how she could help.

“Mark was a tremendous mentor who really kept Fordham grads in the area connected,” she says. When a job opportunity arose in Los Angeles, she promised she would get involved with the chapter in her new hometown.

Since her arrival in the city three years ago, she has done much more than that. With the help of a few fellow Fordham grads, she has revitalized the chapter, introducing two signature events.

She first connected with Caroline Valvardi, FCRH ’10, a “powerhouse behind group,” she says, who has since moved to Washington, D.C. Together, they brought on David Martel, FCLC ’00, and Kevin Carter, FCRH ’12. More recently, Lori Schaffhauser, LAW ’00, joined them. “It’s one of the most well-rounded teams I’ve ever worked with,” Eva says of her fellow Fordham Alumni Chapter of Los Angeles leaders. “It’s all ages, all different industries, all different types of talent. … It’s a great crowd, and they’re just happy to help. If this were corporate America, I would be really excited. And, of course, we’d love to have more.”

The group also reflects the diversity of the local Fordham audience. “LA is so vast; it’s just a different market,” she says. “But being here, we also have unique opportunities to leverage alumni in fields like entertainment. This is the entertainment town, and you don’t quite realize how many different aspects there are within that until you’re here.”

That’s why one of the chapter’s new signature events is a summer Entertainment Panel featuring Fordham grads who range from TV actors to Marvel writers. “It’s sold out both times we’ve held it,” Eva says, as has the new Malibu Wine Hike in the spring. Along with the annual LA Presidential Reception in January, these events have come to form the core of the chapter’s offerings for alumni.

“We’ve also tried baseball games, basketball games, holiday happy hours, all of that. We’re trying different locations and frequencies. It’s all trial and error to see what people here want,” Eva explains.

“This city is a bit fragmented, so I just look forward to linking this community together a bit more, to bringing more Fordham people together.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
I’m passionate about connecting people with organizations or communities or causes they care about that provide wellness for others, and about giving everyone access to opportunities they might not normally get. In my work, a lot of times that’s through philanthropy, like raising funds for after-school programs for children from low-income backgrounds. They provide more than education—they also provide health and wellness support. Nobody operates at their full capacity without having access to basic needs like nutrition, education, and mental health. So I’m passionate about providing access to that, but I’m also passionate about giving donors an opportunity to see how their contributions really make a difference by hosting community events.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
A former CEO I worked with, who was such an inspirational man, once shared a definition of disillusionment that has stuck with me. He said that disillusionment is what happens when you walk into a situation with an illusion of how it should be. Since then, I have made an effort to address most things in life with an open mind and not with preconceived notions that can lead to disappointment. It’s hard, but it works.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite places in New York City are the Lower East Side, West Village, or anywhere south of 14th Street, places like the original Five Points neighborhood, where real old New York is and where New York came into being. When I lived in New York right after college, I had a book that listed all these historic spots. And I would take the train with this book and wander around and just start marking off places. Lower Manhattan is just rich with history.

In the world, I would say Paris. I just went for my birthday earlier this year, and I hadn’t been since I was 11 or 12. There’s a ton of history there too, of course, which is perfect for me. Renoir is my favorite artist, and his studio there is now a museum, which I got to see on this last trip. I just loved tripping around the cobblestone streets and the old shops in that hilly area near the basilica, finding the oldest restaurant and the oldest bar and the oldest of everything.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
There’s a book I read a few months ago that I think will stay with me for a long time. It’s called The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, and it’s by Stephen Cope. It’s a little self-help, in a way, but what I really enjoyed is how he tells a lot of tremendous stories about people who really followed their passion. I especially loved the stories about Jane Goodall and Gandhi, those two stuck out to me. There was so much I didn’t know about their lives or why they chose to do what they did. Understanding why they made these conscious decisions was inspiring.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I would say Elizabeth Stone, who founded and ran The Observer at Lincoln Center for a long time. She was a big supporter. She encouraged me to push the envelope a few times, to take difficult articles even if they might not get published, and even though it sometimes frustrated me at the time, I am so grateful for that opportunity that helped me learn so much. I took writing classes with her too, but it’s one thing when you’re in a class and you’re writing papers—working on a newspaper is a totally different thing. You’re on a team with everybody. You’ve got co-writers, you have an editor … it’s real life. And that was an opportunity that I wouldn’t have taken advantage of if she hadn’t pushed me in that direction.

When Jim Hock, FCRH ’91, lost his father, John, back in 2000, he and his brothers laughed and cried at a memorial service as they listened in rapt attention to stories of the Los Angeles Rams teams that John played on as an offensive lineman back in the 1950s. Before the service had even ended, Jim’s brother began urging him to collect the stories for a book, which became Hollywood’s Team: Grit, Glamour, and the 1950s Los Angeles Rams (Rare Bird Books), published on December 27.

Hock worked on the book while starting a family, founding a public-relations firm, and, from 2013 until last week, working for the Department of Commerce, first as a senior adviser and later as the chief of staff to former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

John Hock moved his family to New Jersey when Jim was a young boy, but during Jim’s senior year at Fordham, he was inspired by a Jesuit Volunteer Corps open house to head west after graduation and begin working in a school for at-risk youth in East Los Angeles. During his years on the West Coast, Hock also worked as a legislative assistant for the City of Los Angeles and interned with his father’s old team, the Rams (which, incidentally, chose its name in honor of the great Fordham Rams teams of the 1930s).

Hock spoke with FORDHAM magazine last week, hours before his time in the Obama administration officially ended.

With all that you’ve had going on, how did you find the time to work on this book?
I basically worked on the book from about 2002 to 2013. I was lamenting that I didn’t have a lot of time, but I had a friend in the book business who said, “I have a great collaborator; let me introduce you.” I met Michael [Downs, the book’s co-author], and we just completely hit it off. I did most of the interviews, but he did some interviews as well, and we would share notes. It was like a 50-50 proposition, in terms of the writing. We could bounce things off each other. Working collaboratively is more fun. But I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the book. And so it kind of sat on the shelf a bit. But then that same friend in the publishing business said, “Look, the Rams are moving back to Los Angeles [from St. Louis, where they moved in 1995]; you need to publish this. This is a great story.”

How did you balance your dad’s story with the story of the team and the times?
There’s the story of my dad throughout this book; he’s the protagonist. But it’s a juxtaposition of the glitz of Hollywood with kind of the real people that make up any city and any community, through the hard work and the quiet work. And so that’s what I was trying to show—a way to honor him and his teammates, but also the people that we all know do the hard work behind the scenes to make things go. That was the genesis of it, and that was the focus of it. And so we tell lots of stories about players and times, but we were really trying to highlight the people.

What was the best part of growing up with a father who played NFL football?
I’m the youngest of seven, and the book is about my dad, but it’s about my mom, too. We heard stories growing up all the time about what it was like to play football in the 1950s. It was obviously a much simpler time. My mother was a third-grade teacher at the same time my dad was playing professional football, and they basically made a comparable salary, which today is just unthinkable. He was a regular guy who loved what he was doing, and loved the game. He was a very quiet guy, a humble guy as well.

The Rams were the first team to integrate, so I heard stories about what it was like for my dad to have African-American friends in the ’50s and go to places, including New York, and not be welcome in bars. It was just story after story like that, from his perspective of what it was like—obviously, he was outraged at that kind of stuff. Hearing those stories was fascinating. We were obviously exposed to famous people, but I was never really interested in that. My dad always said, “Don’t ask for autographs, they’re just like you and me.”

You write about how the Rams were innovative in various ways. What were they doing that other teams weren’t?
The Rams were innovative in a lot of different ways. They were the first team to integrate, the first team to really kind of embrace the modern passing game. Their coach at the time, Sid Gillman, some of the things that he designed in terms of plays and the organization of his offense are still used in some form or fashion today. They were the first team to move; the first ones to have a TV contract, before a league-wide TV contract; the first team to really try to develop a union, a players union, again, before the league had it; the first team to hit a million fans in a season, regular season and pre-season, which is a big deal.

The San Diego Chargers just announced they’re moving back to Los Angeles. There’s been talk for a while of pro football’s place in Los Angeles. Do you think LA can handle two teams?
I do. There’s a natural following for the Rams. There’s been Facebook pages and other things even before they moved, that I’ve been following, maybe because I’m a dork. But hundreds of thousands of people were kind of wishing them back, and the Rams, when they announced their season tickets, sold out within a matter of hours. So there is a market there. It’s a big metropolitan area. It’s much broader geographically than New York, more spread out. You have 20-plus million people in the Southland, they call it, that they can draw from. It’ll be interesting to see. The Chargers don’t have a natural fan base there, because they only played there one year, in 1960, but they’ll find a following.

What will you miss most about working in the Obama administration?
I’ll miss the people the most. We had a tremendous team dedicated to a mission. Our mission at the department was helping businesses with additional tools they needed to succeed. At the end of the day, our goal was to help businesses so they could create jobs and opportunity, and we have quite a trajectory over the last eight years of going from the worst recession since the Great Depression to now 15 million-plus jobs created. You know, there’s more work to do to help people around the country that are still hurting, but that was the key.

What’s next for you?
I’m going to do some private consulting. My first priority is taking time off. So I’m taking a few weeks off to be with my kids and wife and family. My job was two phones constantly ringing 24 hours a day, and it was a tremendous honor, but that time is over.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Joe DeLessio, FCLC ’06.