“That richness of thought and perspectives really helps our work,” said Jonathan Valenti, FCLC ’98, a principal in the customer and marketing strategy practice at Deloitte.

Valenti, who majored in information science, was one of three Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) grads who participated in a Feb. 9 virtual panel titled “From FCLC to the World of Business.”

Tracyann Williams, Ph.D., assistant dean for student support and success at FCLC, moderated the discussion. She asked the panelists to share their experiences as Lincoln Center students, their tips on taking liberal arts skills into the job market, and what they like about hiring applicants with that background.

Maureen Beshar, FCLC ’86, majored in philosophy and political science, and today she is executive director of business development for the investment management firm Hardman Johnston Global Advisors. She said her Fordham Jesuit education—with its focus on well-rounded learning and being a person for others—has been valuable in her personal and professional life.

“Fordham’s [Jesuit] foundation … I really think it makes a difference in a person,” said Beshar, whose two daughters both attend Fordham and who serves on the University’s President’s Council, a group of successful alumni committed to mentoring Fordham’s future leaders, funding key initiatives, and raising the University’s profile. “It really, ethically, helped me think differently. I can attribute a lot back to Fordham, with how I treat others, how I think about situations.”

Make the Most of ‘Internship City’

Scot Hoffman, FCLC ’98, majored in English and assumed he would pursue a career in academia. But a public affairs internship at the Fresh Air Fund, which Hoffman found through Fordham’s Career Center, resulted in him becoming the organization’s director of public affairs after he graduated. He has worked in the public affairs and corporate communications field ever since, specializing in building and managing corporate reputation. Today, he is vice president and director of communications at the San Francisco-based investment firm Dodge & Cox.

“Internships are really, really important,” Hoffman told students, adding that Fordham’s location is helpful in getting that experience. “Explore what’s available to you. New York City is one of the greatest cities in the world. So many industries are represented there, [and there are]so many opportunities there.”

Blending Business Education with the Liberal Arts

The alumni panelists were joined by Robert Daly, assistant dean of the Gabelli School of Business at Lincoln Center, who discussed the opportunities for FCLC students to study things like marketing, business administration, and sustainable business by taking classes or minoring at Gabelli. He also emphasized that Gabelli undergraduates complete a liberal arts core, an example of Fordham’s faith in the value of a liberal arts education, and that he often encourages Gabelli students to consider FCLC minors like psychology to complement their business majors.

Williams said that the panelists’ perspectives were “invaluable” in helping students “understand how you may move from the liberal arts into business—that it is not necessarily a linear path, but one that is exciting.”

The process is something that Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., has on her radar, and in a March 7 Zoom meeting, Auricchio, the dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center, discussed it with the FCLC Board of Advisors—a group of alumni and friends of the college that she reconvened last fall. The group met with Patricia Peek, Ph.D., dean of undergraduate admissions, and Rodger Van Allen, director of development for Fordham College at Lincoln Center, to talk about how they can show prospective students all Fordham has to offer.

The new board, which is similar to a student advisory group that also began meeting in the fall, is comprised of Maureen Beshar, FCLC ’86; Cathy Blaney, FCLC ’86; Jolie Ann Calella, FCLC ’91; Rick Calero, FCLC ’90; Patricia Dugan Perlmuth, FCLC ’79; Jonathan Valenti, FCLC ’98; and Mark Luis Villamar, GABELLI ’69.

The admissions meeting was just one of many ways this new group of FCLC supporters put their heads together to help the institution they love. This was their third gathering after two last semester—including a joint meeting with members of the new student group.

Raising the Profile

Auricchio revived the Board of Advisors with the hopes of both increasing alumni engagement and substantially raising the profile of the college, which she said is one of the best-kept secrets in New York City. Ask your average New Yorker about the Lincoln Center campus, and they may be familiar with the Law School, but not necessarily Fordham College at Lincoln Center, she said. One way to fix that is to establish a much more robust connection to New York City, and who better to help than a board of advisors, each with deep roots in the Big Apple?

“I fully believe that FCLC can become the premiere liberal arts college in Manhattan, and I think it can be unique in its focus on the arts, its integration in the city, and its commitment to Jesuit values of social justice and more,” she said.

Valenti, a native of Poland, Maine, who visited both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses as a high school senior, said he was smitten immediately with the idea of living in Manhattan and seeing all of New York as his campus. He said he loves the University’s motto, “New York is my campus, Fordham is my school.”

“My family thought I was crazy. When we went to Rose Hill, they were like, ‘Isn’t this where you want to go?’ I said ‘nope,’” he recalled, laughing.

When he was an undergraduate, he majored in informational systems; now a partner at Deloitte, he said he’s eager to give back. He’s already hosted a gathering of prospective students at the company’s Manhattan headquarters at 30 Rock and wants to do more.

A New Opportunity to Connect

“Fordham gave me a great educational foundation for the work I do,” he said, noting that he was prepared for the convergence of business and technology that has happened in the years since. The advisory board, he said, has given him a new opportunity to connect with others who feel the same way.

“It’s been exciting to be part of a discussion with other alums who have been out there and seen the value of the education and have pride in the school.”

Valenti said he’s especially interested in helping create programs that take advantage of expertise in different disciplines, like combining the arts with law and business. The conversation about admitted students was a good place to start, he said, and gave him hope for future meetings.

“There is a hunger for more of the data that was shared by the admissions side. We’re looking to understand where the students are coming from, and why they’re choosing Fordham,” he said.

“People do question the value of a liberal arts education, and the way we function at work is changing and evolving, and so Fordham has a chance to be setting that agenda.”

Auricchio said that although the first meetings—there is one more left this semester—have primarily been focused on getting the group off the ground, it’s key to her that the group is action- and goal-oriented. Participants at the March 7 meeting made it clear they feel the same.

“I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. I want to find ways to build connections through the whole student pipeline, from the time when students apply, to when they meet alumni, through the time that they’re students, through their alumni experience after they graduate,” she said.

“I see this as a virtuous cycle. If we start engaging them as students, while they’re students, they develop stronger connections to the college, and to each other.”

That’s according to three members of the Fordham University President’s Council—Maureen Beshar, FCLC ’86, Errol Pierre, GABELLI ’05, and Ed Sisk, FCRH ’85—who shared their stories and experiences with Fordham students and others on Sept. 14. The online panel discussion, “Born, Bred, and Making it in New York City,” was part of the council’s Executive Leadership Series.

“There’s just something about a Fordham student that has Jesuit values, and wants to be a global citizen and give back to their community,” said Pierre, a senior vice president at Health First, the largest nonprofit health insurance company in New York. “And I think there’s something intangible that just comes with” living, studying, and working in New York City.

Putting Fordham Lessons into Practice

When Sisk, the managing director and head of public finance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was put in charge of the company’s banking division after the 2008 financial crisis, he said that he used values he learned at Fordham years ago to help manage his team through it.

“For an organization to be successful, it has to be driven by core values,” he said. “We define our core values as: we focus on our clients, we work hard, we conduct ourselves with integrity, we win or lose as a team—that’s how I assess how people do their jobs.”

Beshar, a managing director and CEO of North America for Robeco, an asset management firm, said that in her field, she has to explain complex situations and solutions to clients, and her Fordham education helps her do that effectively.

“I think Fordham really helped me question things in a way that I might not have done before,” she said.

Seizing Opportunities to Explore Career Options

When Pierre started at Fordham, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He enrolled in the business school because he wanted to look like “the guy with the dress shoes and the suit whipping around The Wall Street Journal on the subway,” he said. But while he was at Fordham, he decided to use the internship opportunities presented to him to explore several fields.

“Internships really drove me to my passion,” he said. “I was glad I was in the city, because I had a lot of friends that went to other schools that didn’t have the plethora of opportunities for internships, as I did being so close to Manhattan.”

He started out interning for a life insurance company and quickly realized that wasn’t for him. “After two weeks, I was like, ‘I can’t do this,’ which was fine,” he said. “The beautiful thing about internships is, if you find that you don’t like something, that’s just as valuable” as finding something you like.

He then tried interning at a bank but found that the role was often about “helping rich people get richer.”

“Even though I was in the business school, we still had to take philosophy, we still had to take religion—I didn’t know why I still had to take those classes—but then I learned, ‘Oh, I’m graduating with a conscience and as a global citizen,’” Pierre said.

That led him to his third internship, at Blue Cross Blue Shield. He started out doing data entry, but over the next 10 years there, he learned more about aspects of the insurance business that interested him, such as “coverage gaps—why some things are covered, why things aren’t,” and disparities in health care.

“I would not be in my line of business if it was not for interning while I was at Fordham,” he said.

Thinking Differently

When Beshar first enrolled at Fordham, she was working two jobs—one at a local deli and one at a hospital—to help pay for the cost of school. After her first year, she had to drop out and ended up taking an entry-level position at Merrill Lynch to save some money. Beshar knew that if she wanted to advance in her field, she had to go back to school, and when she did, she returned to Fordham and decided to study something that would help her think differently and stand out—philosophy.

“Going to Fordham, it almost felt like coming home again,” she said. “With my interest in philosophy, and trying to be a little bit analytical, Fordham … was a natural choice. … It was very exciting, and I think gave me exposure to so many opportunities, so many different people, so many different experiences.”

Tapping Into with the Alumni Network

One of the pieces of advice the panelists gave to students and those in attendance was to reach out to those who preceded them at Fordham, particularly because they all now share a bond with the school and the city they called home for at least four years.

“One of the reasons to love being a Fordham New Yorker is there’s so darn many of us, and we’re thriving where we are doing business and we are mentoring,” said Sisk, who added that he’s always available to offer advice to Fordham students.

Beshar said that she’s seen and benefited from the positive impacts of the alumni network.

“What you learn and the support you get and just the networking —if you’re open to learning, I think it’s always there” for you, she said.