Some of Fordham’s top alumni shared their secrets to success with senior students and recent graduates at the President’s Council Kickoff Reception and Executive Leadership Series Mentoring Event at the Lincoln Center campus on Oct. 21. 

The annual event is an opportunity for seasoned alumni to mentor their younger counterparts—both recent grads and students. The mentees included graduating seniors from all three colleges, including Founder’s Scholars, student-athletes, and first-generation college students. 

This year’s reception was the first held in-person in two years due to the pandemic. Most of the mentors are members of the President’s Council, a select group of Fordham’s accomplished and committed alumni who fund key initiatives and provide mentorship and networking opportunities.

At the beginning of the evening, Joseph M. McShane, S.J, president of Fordham, thanked the alumni for mentoring their younger “sisters and brothers.” 

“When a Fordham student has a champion in a law firm or a corporation or anywhere who is a Fordham graduate, that is powerful, and they know it. On top of that, they learn from you in ways that you don’t even know. They will watch you for wise clues. How do you treat people? How do you live the values of the institution?” Father McShane said. “They will learn from you. They will emulate you.” 

In roundtable discussions paired with hors d’oeuvres and drinks in Lowenstein’s 12th-Floor Lounge, about two dozen alumni and parents shared career and life advice. They first considered their “cannonball moment”: a pivotal moment in their lives that shaped their professional journey. The phrase is taken from the life of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, whose own leg was shattered by a cannonball in the Battle of Pamplona 500 years ago. In his contemplative period of recovery, he read about the life of Jesus and focused on a new path. 

For Mary Jane McCartney, TMC ’69, her cannonball moment came in the early ’70s, when she was a young graduate with a mathematics degree who worked for Royal Dutch Shell. She learned that Con Edison had a new job opening—a much bigger role than her previous position. But she wasn’t discouraged. In 1980, she became Con Edison’s first female director of fuel supply. 

“I was willing to put myself out there and try for a job that I never believed I would get,” said McCartney, who is a member of Fordham’s second graduating class of women. She added that that’s something women tend not to do, but should. “[Don’t think] ‘If there are 10 qualifications and I only have nine, I’m not going to apply.’ Nonsense.” 

Halfway through the evening, the table conversations switched to life after the pandemic. The alumni considered the future of their industries and how students—especially the graduating seniors next to them—could best prepare to enter the job market.

Mark Smith, FCRH ’04, senior vice president of investments at Wells Fargo, told students about how millions of employees in the U.S. are reevaluating their lives and quitting their jobs, in light of the pandemic. He urged students to know what they want and to advocate for their values during interviews with potential employers, particularly with direct questions. 

Another mentor seated at the table, Rob Boller, FCRH ’99, a lawyer who runs the New York office of Barnes & Thornburg LLP, a large national firm, added that current graduating seniors have a unique advantage in the job market.

“When you’re finishing up college, you just want to get your first job. You want to hear ‘yes.’ It is very important to get a job and start building up your resume, but to Mark’s point, businesses are in flux right now,” Boller said to the students. “Folks looking for jobs have a lot more leverage than they used to. I think you guys are in a better position than we were, coming out of college, in terms of negotiating.”

Pandemic or no pandemic, the graduating seniors have a long road ahead, said Smith. 

“The ugly word in networking is ‘work.’ You’ve got to do research on the people you want to network with. Try to get them on Zoom. Some of them aren’t going to answer. Some of them are going to say, ‘Call me in a month,’” Smith said. “It’s not easy, and it doesn’t get easier. Until you have a job, it’s a full-time job getting a job.” 

At the end of the night, the graduating seniors reflected on what they learned. Brigitte Gibbs, FCRH ’22, a psychology major in the CSTEP program, talked about some advice from an alumna and retiree from the corporate world.

“She said, ‘If you don’t have it figured out right now, it’s OK. You’ll figure it out eventually.’ That was something that really stuck with me,” Gibbs said. “I want to go to medical school, and that’s a straightforward plan, for the most part. But I’ve wondered, am I cut out for this? When she said that, I was like, OK … Everything’s going to work itself out.” 

*At this event, guests were eating and drinking. The University requires all members of the campus community to wear masks while indoors. The only exceptions to masking requirements are for individuals alone in a room, or in their residence hall apartment or bedroom, and while eating or drinking. 

“The virtual college fair will include the opportunity to connect with representatives from 50+ private colleges from across New York as well as workshops, offered in English and Spanish, on the college process and financial aid,” reads the online event posting. “Individual virtual appointments with financial aid experts will also be available in English and Spanish.”

Workshops include a Fordham-sponsored mentoring session for young men of color with University alumni and working professionals who are also men of color (and requires pre-registration) as well as sessions on how to pay and prep for college. 

This year’s fair was sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, and Fordham. In years past, the fair has been held on Fordham’s campus. 

Register for the fair here.

When Vazquez found out she’d be receiving the inaugural Trailblazer Award, presented to a graduate from the past 10 years who has demonstrated outstanding dedication to Fordham and whose leadership has inspired fellow alumni, she said she was “totally shocked.” In fact, she’s involved in so many Fordham activities that she initially thought she was getting a phone call about her work on the commencement committee.

“Fordham is a huge part of my life, as anyone who talks to me knows,” she said, “so I’m excited, humbled, and honored.”

Kenny, a 1957 Fordham College at Rose Hill grad and 1961 Fordham Law alumnus who has been named Ram of the Year, joked that he was originally worried he’d have to dress as Ramses the Ram at the reception. When he was told that the award honors a graduate who has enhanced the reputation of the University through their professional achievements, personal accomplishments, and loyal service to Fordham, he simply said: “I feel truly unworthy.”

A Pipeline to Success

Both grads have a long history of supporting Fordham.

Vazquez, a vice president of campus strategy and pipeline development at BNY Mellon, has been an active member of the Staten Island Alumni Chapter and the Young Alumni Committee since graduation. She’s also a member of the Fordham Mentoring Program, which she says dovetails with her work in recruitment and retention for BNY Mellon.

“It’s a question of how you can help people keep developing in the right way,” she said. “It sounds cliché, but Fordham helped shape the person that I am today. So it’s exciting to see how I can support current students both in and beyond the program.”

Vazquez, who received a full scholarship to Fordham from JPMorgan Chase and interned at the company throughout her college career as part of their Smart Start program, says she wants to help others have the same great experience she did in college and beyond.

“One of my main goals is to be a leader and show people what’s possible,” she said. “I have been lucky enough to have some fantastic people and opportunities in my life that have helped me figure things out, pushed me, and challenged me. I want to be that for other people and help them find success. So it’s amazing to be recognized for that and be able to continue spreading the message of Fordham.”  

An Alumni Advocate

Kenny, a dayhop from White Plains who had to pay his own way, said he feels similarly.

“I’m so glad I did what I did, and I owe so much to Fordham because it was through them that I got to where I am,” he said. “So I always felt I had to pay it back.”

And he certainly has. He’s been a member of the Law School Alumni Association for 40 years, he helped plan his 50th Jubilee in 2007, and he currently supports Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute and mentors students at the Law School—particularly international and L.M. students, helping place them in jobs and on the alumni association board. He’s received several honors from the Law School for his professional and volunteer work, including the Richard J. Bennett Memorial Award in 1999, The Fordham International Law Journal’s Amicus Fidelis Award in 2006, and the Fordham Law Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.

He’s also been actively involved with the Feerick Center for Social Justice since its founding in 2006 by his friend John Feerick, FCRH ’58, LAW ’61, longtime Fordham Law professor and former dean of the school.

“When I was at the Fordham Law Review, in my final year of law school, John was the editor in chief. I tell everybody that John was the editor and I was his gopher,” he laughed. “We’ve been friends ever since.”

Motivated by the Mission

Kenny, who retired after more than 30 years at Transamerica Leasing, said his Jesuit education played a big part in his professional success. “They really train you how to think,” he said. “And if you can do that, you can succeed in just about anything.”

He feels the Feerick Center is a particularly good example of the Jesuit mission that motivates him.

“The most important thing the Catholic Church can do in this day and age is support social justice,” Kenny said. “That’s why I do so much of what I do in my life.”

Fordham’s Jesuit values made a huge impact on Vazquez too, particularly the tenet of cura personalis, or care for the whole person.

“Fordham encourages you to grow your own faith, your own individuality, regardless of what that is. Fordham embraces differences and diversity, and that helped shape me as an individual,” she said.

This year marks the first time the FUAA is hosting the Alumni Recognition Reception, which will be held biennially from now on. The reception celebrates all alumni volunteers. This year’s two honorees were nominated by their alumni peers and selected by the FUAA Advisory Board members. Vazquez will be the first to receive the Trailblazer Award. Kenny will be the latest to receive the Ram of the Year Award. Past recipients include Bob Campbell, Bill Burke, Vin Scully, and Mary Higgins Clark.

Mark C. Smith’s job advising pro athletes, entertainers, and others as a VP of wealth management at UBS Financial Services keeps him plenty busy. Yet somehow, the 2004 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill finds time to be a true renaissance man.

Among his pursuits outside of his day job, Smith serves on the board of Safe Horizon, an organization that provides social services for victims of abuse and violent crimes; owns a Harlem tour group company that leads jazz club crawls; acts in the occasional community theater production in his hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut; and, when he has a moment, keeps up practice on the trombone.

“I’m all over the place,” jokes Smith, who says that his varied interests lead a diverse group of Fordham students and recent graduates to seek out his advice, which he shares with them regularly as a member of the Fordham President’s Council. “Politics, Wall Street, entrepreneurship—I get questions from everyone,” he says, referring to the council’s fall leadership series gathering in November.

Smith’s ability to serve as an informed mentor to a wide swath of graduating students and young alumni has its roots in his studies as a history and sociology double major at Rose Hill, along with the University’s core curriculum, he says. When entering Fordham as a first-year student, Smith had every intention of studying political science, but he became enthralled with the new information about familiar topics he got out of history and sociology classes.

After graduating, Smith worked as a campaign coordinator for Charlie King, then a candidate for New York attorney general. When he spoke to his friend Michael Biondo, FCRH ’04, who was working on Wall Street, though, he realized his history studies prepared him well for a job in the financial sector.

“You just needed to be able to explain complex things to people in a simple way,” Smith says. “And that’s one of the things you learn being a history major—how you boil things down into succinct thoughts.”

It’s clear that Smith has found success doing just that, as he was recently named by Forbes as a “2018 Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisor,” an accomplishment that speaks to his dedication within his profession.

“The great thing about working in wealth management is you are your own boss and you kind of determine how you want to run your own business,” he says of why his job has kept him engaged since he started at UBS in 2006. “I’m able to actually add value for folks in a real way that’ll help their family for years to come.”

That desire to help others carries over to his role on the President’s Council, but Smith also appreciates that the council allows him gain valuable insights about the economy from the perspective of job seekers.

“It’s a great way to get a litmus test of what’s going on in the real world,” Smith says. “You get a lot out of it also because the kids are super grateful and you feel like you’re making an impact.”

While not every graduate will be able to find time for as many passion projects as Smith, and while even fewer will wind up in professional circles that allow them to join a group vacation with Oprah Winfrey, as Smith has, he feels confident that Fordham is the best place not only for launching students on their career paths but for developing their overall growth as individuals.

“Being at Fordham, I think you definitely are educated on the whole person—not just your intellectual side, but your spiritual side and your moral side,” Smith says of his alma mater. “Fordham has so much to offer its students in growing who they are in a deeper way, and I think that’s something that sticks with you.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
Right now, I’m most passionate about giving back through Safe Horizon, where I’m on the board. They’re the largest service provider for victims of violence in the country. We serve over 250,000 people, women and children primarily, per year in the five boroughs of New York, and we provide comprehensive health, helping them deal with everything from leaving a violent situation and finding immediate housing to providing them with a lawyer, counseling, job advice, and anything to get them from crisis to confidence.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
That there are 24 hours in a day. What does that mean? In my first job, I was complaining about, “Oh, I don’t get to do this, I don’t get to do that,” and my boss told me, “Mark, there are 24 hours in a day. You can work here, then you go home, do your passion, then give back, then have a girlfriend. You have all this time in the day. Use every single hour, every minute of your day to accomplish what you want to do.”

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite place in New York City is Harlem. I feel like I’m at home because of the cultural significance it has played in American history, with its renaissance in the 1920s, and it has a very robust political community that is unrivaled around the country. They have great food and great jazz, amazing parks, and beautiful town homes. And it feels like a community.

My favorite place in the world—I’ve traveled to over 30 countries—would have to be Italy. I love the food, the culture, the wine. It’s a really, really cool place to hang out. I fell in love with just being on the Amalfi Coast and looking at the ocean from cliffs, and then going to Florence, and hanging out in one of the coolest cities in the world with the best food, and then being a 20-minute drive from Tuscany with the best wine in the world. So yeah, Italy has a special place in my heart.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. My whole life, I had learned about American history through the lens of public school education and learning the history the school system wanted us to be taught. And Zinn basically slammed the door on all of those thoughts that you had and gave you the raw deal of what happens in this country, unencumbered by people thinking, “Oh, we can’t talk about that.” It really just made you question everything and then question the validity of everything you hear. It really taught me to not just take someone else’s word for things, but to find out for myself. It was just like, “Holy mackerel. Everything I knew to this date was wrong.” This book had a serious impact on me coming out of high school.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I’m gonna go with Dr. Mark Naison. He really did have a great influence on my Fordham career. I remember being excited to go to his class From Rock and Roll to Hip-Hop because you never knew what kind of food was gonna be laying around that he just ordered for the students to eat and enjoy. You’re listening to old-school hip-hop and discussing what was happening at that point in history with the black experience over Chinese food or ribs from Johnson’s BBQ. He was a great professor to have. And then he also took students to experience life outside the campus walls. So we’d go play golf in Crotona Park, or he took us around on hip-hop tours around the Bronx. He really did make the Bronx a larger campus for us.

They convened at the Princeton Club, a private club nestled in the heart of midtown Manhattan, for an “evening of sharing expertise, networking, and building relationships among council members, seniors, and young alumni,” said Carolyn M. Albstein, GABELLI ’82, PAR, chair of the President’s Council. The theme of this year’s event was the power of storytelling.

Cards at each table carried a message for guests: “Share and discuss a few milestones from your own life—highlights or setbacks—and consider how they have shaped your personal narrative.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, was one of the first attendees to share a piece of his personal life.

“Fordham was where my father, a first-generation college student, was able for himself—and his whole family—to achieve the American dream,” he told a roomful of council members and alumni.

Robert D. Daleo, GSB ’72, chair of the board of trustees, recounted another story, about a day familiar to every Fordham graduate: commencement.

“Every year, we sit up there in Keating, gently shaded while everybody else is in the hot sun,” Daleo said, referring to the Terrace of Presidents, where board members and distinguished guests sit during the ceremony. “We look out on that sea of roughly 2,000 graduates, and Father [McShane] and I lean over next to each other and say, ‘Well, we did it again. Thank goodness!’ And for most people, they think that’s the end. Really, it’s just the beginning.”

Career Counseling Across Five Generations

Huddled around white-clothed tables with hors d’oeuvres and drinks in hand, students and young alumni heard tales about their predecessors’ careers: their struggles, their successes, and even their ages.

“Five generations of people are here tonight. We’re talking about people from the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, the 2000s and the teens,” council member John J. Reddy Jr., Esq., FCRH ’76, PAR, exclaimed to the men and women seated at his table. “I thought to myself, which of these five decades do you belong in? You belong in that first one—the ’70s. I’m the old man in the room!”

Reddy warned the younger generation not to overplan their lives. Today, Reddy is an attorney. But over the past few decades, he was many other things: a first-year biology major who had planned on becoming a dentist; a cook who fixed fried chicken, shrimp, and hot dogs and watched games for free at a ballpark concessions stand—which was, he mentioned, “the best job I ever had,” and an employee at a securities bureau in an attorney general’s office.

“Suddenly, it becomes all in your past,” he said. “These are the things you were gonna do, and then you find something that you like to do.”

Steven D. Valentic, GABELLI ’04, vice president at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., admitted one of the first mistakes of his professional career. He’d been working at a firm for about five months, when the worst happened—he made a trade-related error.

“That’s what you do when you’re right out of school. You’re learning. It happens to everyone,” he told the students and alumni seated around his table. “You overcome it by not making the same mistake twice.”

A few tables over, another council member addressed a different problem: what to do when your current job grows stagnant.

“In 2014, I was frustrated. What do I want to do with myself? Where do I see myself in five years?” said Inoki A. Suarez, FCRH ’98, managing director and team leader at the Carlyle Group. “Doing the same thing I’m doing [now]? The answer is no.”

Suarez abandoned his old job, created a startup company with a few friends, and reinvented himself. Over three and a half years, he flew across the U.S. and met new clients, leveraged LinkedIn and Fordham connections, and eventually helped increase the company’s assets from zilch to $2.6 billion.

His message? Don’t be afraid to go back to square one.

Life at 21: Facing the ‘Real World’

Some of the students in the room aren’t even at “square one” yet, like Neil Joyce, a graduating senior at the Rose Hill campus who is mentally prepping himself for life—and his career—in the ‘real world.’

Life for a graduating senior is, as Joyce puts it, “a bit of an existential crisis.” He’s trying to pinpoint where he’ll be five, ten, 15 years from now, he said—and that’s exactly why mentoring events like these are so important.

“A lot of alumni said that’s a question that never really goes away … this is a journey that will be going on for the rest of our lives,” he said. “[Events like these are about] keeping the conversation going and helping us think critically about where we want to be in the near and distant future.”

It’s all about learning and networking, attendees said. And, as Father McShane says, “building a new world.”

“It’s the end of a long day—the night before the midterm elections. And what are you doing?” Father McShane asked the Fordham women and men standing before him. “You’re building a new world by networking with younger sisters and brothers of yours.”

But shortly after graduating and accepting an offer from a master’s degree program in music, she realized she was taking the wrong path.

“It sounds like an apocryphal story,” Edelman admits, “but I woke up one morning and said, ‘I’m doing the wrong thing.’ So I took the GMAT, applied to Fordham, and started going to business school at night that September.”

She was attracted to Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business because of the University’s culture, which the 1980 grad describes as “scrappy, diverse, with no pretensions. And you can still feel that now.”

Two years after enrolling in Fordham’s MBA program, where she concentrated in marketing and operations research, she got a job in marketing at Avon. Over the course of 25 years there, she worked her way up through several marketing and product development positions and later led the sales organization and global supply chain—until she ended up in IT. “I had not written a piece of code since I had been in the seventh grade,” she laughs, “but they felt I understood the Global IT area well enough to run it while we recruited a CIO.” She fell in love with the job and ended up as senior vice president and chief information officer for eight years.

She left the company in 2008 to deal with family matters and, for flexibility, decided to focus on expanding her positions as a board member for two public companies. But she was soon recruited as vice chairman at Emigrant Bank, which Fordham founder Archbishop John Hughes helped establish. The bank’s values and ethos have a lot in common with those of her graduate alma mater, Edelman says, noting that both were founded to support Irish immigrants. And, she adds, she loves working for an organization whose “footprint is primarily in the community.”

“It almost seems like, no matter who I meet, if I tell them where I work it’s like, ‘Oh, I had my first mortgage with you,’” she says. “It’s terrific to see the values and legacy of the bank in action.”

Edelman especially enjoys using the diverse experiences and knowledge she’s gained to support young women as they begin their own careers, something she does often with her own daughter, Julia, now a first-year law student at Fordham, and her friends.

“I’m close with several of her friends,” Edelman explains, “and I’ve met with several of them often, either helping them write resumes or coaching them on how to handle work situations that sometimes get political. Early in my career I had terrific mentors, people who explained the dynamics that weren’t apparent to a young person starting out in the workforce. And that was tremendously beneficial to me. So I have a great time with her friends, soaking in the stories, and helping them if I can.”

Though sometimes, she says, they already know exactly what to do. “I’m so impressed with this generation. Sometimes they tell me the situation, and I just ask what they think they should do next, and they’ve got it. They just need to hear themselves speak it.”

She hopes to touch on some of these themes during her keynote speech at next month’s second annual Women’s Philanthropy Summit at Fordham, which will be held on October 24 on the Lincoln Center campus.

“Part of what’s important for women and women’s development,” Edelman says, “is leadership, not only in terms of your professional life but your full life.”

This generation of young women, she says, “is focusing on supporting each woman’s personal choice, on self-reliance and independence, which I think is positive. So a focus on personal principles is important.

“We’re in a world right now with a lot of mixed signals. So individuals who have a constancy to them, a set of beliefs, an inner strength—they are going to prevail and lead.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
I am most passionate about my family and our extended family of friends. I’m very fortunate that both my parents are still alive, and I’m very close with my sister and brother. And then there’s my daughter, Julia, and her friends and their parents. We are loving, close, together constantly, and help each other navigate life.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
It came from a friend in the form of a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Because the reality is that, in business and in life, there often can be multiple “rights.” But if you operate in a way that’s consistent with your values and with what you really believe, you can’t look back with regret. Everything may not work out, but you have your integrity.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
In New York, it’s Lincoln Center, especially the Metropolitan Opera House. I think it’s an extraordinarily beautiful place, with an energy and a dynamism all its own.

In the world, I have two. First, my home in rural Connecticut. It’s very quiet. It’s very slow. It’s very nature-filled. And I love that. But also Florence, Italy. I inherited that one from my dad. We traveled there together, and I’ve been there since. I’ve brought Julia and her friend and her friend’s mom there too. There’s this intersection, particularly from the Renaissance period, of the highest order in architecture and art and music—all in one very walkable city.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
I am a student of human behavior. I have to name three. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence for me filled in the blanks about certain characteristics of high-performing leaders that translate into more success than others. Because I don’t know how you can be a great leader if you do not have self-awareness, if you don’t listen, if you don’t have empathy. It’s the glue that holds together why certain people make certain situations—situations that by all rights should never have worked—work. Next is John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, about tragedy on Mount Everest. It’s an incredible story of a plan that goes awry, of team dynamics, of individualism and—to some degree—selfishness. And then Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, about Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated trip to Antarctica 100 years ago—an incredible story of leadership, resilience, integrity, and persistence.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
Alan Alda. He is a man of diverse talents and interests, humble and honest, and forever young. He is still trying to change the world for the better, including through his podcast and his book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? I saw an interview he did recently where he said that the question he most likes to ask people, either as an icebreaker or just as a way of getting some noise out of the system, is “what are you passionate about?” Because people are absolutely willing to talk about that, and all of a sudden you learn something about them, and all of a sudden maybe you have a connection you didn’t know about.

“It’s not easy, and I’m not trying to project that I have the silver bullet,” he says, “but I share a bit about my own past and try to show them that there are some controllable things they can do to put themselves in a position to win.”

Crawley grew up on the working-class West Side of Chicago. As a young boy, he lost both of his parents, one of them violently. But his grandparents raised him, and he found extra support in the local community.

“I’ve had the good fortune of having folks who’ve believed in me and supported me,” he says, “everything from the Boys and Girls Club to my extended family to my colleagues when I first joined Morgan Stanley.”

“I had zero connectivity with [my undergraduate] school,” Crawley says. “When I went to Fordham for my MBA, it was the first time I had experienced that sense of community with an academic institution,” Crawley says. “I tapped into a powerful alumni network, and I also made a few of my very best friends.”

Networking has been central to his rise at Morgan Stanley, he says, but it’s his work as a mentor, “especially for black and brown individuals from below the poverty line,” that is “core to who I am.”

Crawley often helps junior analysts at Morgan Stanley, some of whom are fellow Fordham graduates, get their footing. He has come back to Fordham’s campus to speak at events with current students and alumni. He’s a new trustee for the national Boys and Girls Club, where he serves on the Midwest Regional Team based out of his native Chicago. And he recently joined the board of Covenant House New York, where he continues to meet with those young men.

For Crawley, who now lives in New York with his wife and twin daughters, it’s simply his responsibility.

“I have been given a platform to enable real change in people,” he says. “There is just a modicum of difference between me and the outcome of my life and these kids that I’m speaking to at Covenant House [and the Boys and Girls Club]. We are literally cut from the same tree, but people took the time to mentor and mold me.

“That’s why I want us to keep pushing forward.”

Successful Black Alumni Mentor Black Students

When Garrick Mayweather Jr. was invited to the first-ever gathering of Fordham Gents—a group of prominent black alumni mentoring black male student-athletes—he was excited by the idea.

Mayweather’s high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was 90 percent black, he says, and seeing fewer black faces on Fordham’s campus was something he had to adjust to. So walking into a mentoring event just for young black men was “a very good feeling,” says the pre-med senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill. “It’s good to see something you’re a little more comfortable with, and to see notable alumni coming back to help you.”

An offensive lineman who came to Fordham on a full-tuition football scholarship, Mayweather says he already knew a few of the alumni at the Feb. 8 event from their involvement with athletics. Some of them had been athletes themselves.

Fordham Trustee Darryl Brown talked about what his life looked like after his star turn on the Fordham men’s basketball team.

By most accounts, Brown was an exceptional athlete. The Celtics drafted him after he graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1975. But things took a turn in Boston.

“I got smacked,” he said of the pro league. “I realized maybe this isn’t for me and thought, ‘I’m not going to keep knocking my head against the door.’”

After two years in the NBA, Brown was offered a coaching position at Fordham and a chance to continue his education. He came back and graduated with a master’s in communications from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1981. He went on to a 30-year career at ABC and retired eight years ago. Brown offered his story not as a cautionary tale, but simply as one experience among many.

Mayweather could relate; he will take his own shot at the pros when he enters the draft this spring. But if and when his days on the gridiron come to an end, he has a pretty impressive fallback career plan: orthopedic surgery. A high school hospital internship and his experience as an athlete helped him develop an interest in the field. And for good measure, he’ll graduate with a minor in business administration. “I figured since I was at a college with a really good business school, I might as well get a business minor,” says Mayweather.

The student-athletes at the event broke into small discussion groups with seven Gents to focus on a particular topic. Focusing on diversity and inclusiveness, the students and alumni will meet four more times before the end of the year.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for our young people to connect with men who have walked this campus in their shoes and can provide a perspective and leadership, not just for right now, but for where they want to go forward,” said Fordham football coach Andrew Breiner.

Mayweather was in a group with Anthony Carter, FCRH ’76, former chief diversity officer at Johnson & Johnson, who also serves on Fordham’s Diversity Task Force. Carter said that the group’s primary purpose is to “instill confidence and leadership.” He was quick to let the athletes know that he and his fellow alumni consider them to be a talented and privileged group. He told the student-athletes that he hopes they will be able to reach out to other students on campus and grow the network.

“The one thing the athletes have in common with everyone else on campus is that they are students,” Carter said. “We want to ingrain in them, ‘What do I owe? What’s my payback?’”

Carter referred to the “diversity crisis” at universities nationwide and said that while there’s still some way to go, he had never seen a program like Fordham Gents back in the early 1970s.

“It feels complete, but only meaning that we can bring folks together and initiate the responsibility,” he said. “It doesn’t solve the problem. That still needs to be worked through.”

Juan Carlos Matos, director of multicultural affairs, said the meeting is a first step. He added that he hopes the pilot serves as a model to eventually include other identity groups.

Mayweather exchanged contact information with Carter and plans to be in touch. “I’m pretty good as far as follow-up emails,” he says.

Though he knew all the young men at the Gents event prior to the gathering, Mayweather says he was struck by how everyone there seemed genuinely engaged—and how the evening gave them an opportunity to see each other in a different light.

“It was nice to be together, to see a side of the guys you never saw before: a more professional side, with everyone dressed up in their best.”

Written with Tom Stoelker

Working in Swinarski’s lab, Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Jeremy Fague set out to help find the answer. For almost two years, Fague has been helping Swinarski and a group of Columbia University Medical Center researchers use math and computer programs, like Visual Basic and Excel, to analyze patients who are short of breath.

The researchers place 89 sensors in different patterns on patients’ chests, backs, and stomachs to measure changes in their chest volume while they exercise. They’re hoping this new data will offer better insights compared with data from breathing tests, and will eventually lead to better ways of managing emphysema and other pulmonary issues.

In his work as a research assistant, Fague has been trying to determine what sensor patterns work for different types of people. “The original pattern only works for one body type,” Fague explains. “We want to use this technology to serve a wider population of patients. I’ve spent a lot of time writing a program to try to unlock a lot of this data.” 

Fague, a Massachusetts native, started out on the pre-law track at Fordham before realizing he could apply his passion for logic through a double major in math and economics and a minor in computer science. After taking a linear algebra class with Swinarski, he approached him about research opportunities and was invited to join this project.

“I was really attracted to the applied nature of it,” he says. “I’ve always been drawn to how I can use math and technology to directly impact the world around me. Through this work, I can really see how being able to analyze the data differently is going to make a difference in someone’s life.”

Working with Swinarski outside the classroom has been particularly rewarding for Fague. “He challenges me to think on my own and to find solutions,” Fague says. “He gives me a lot of feedback and also works alongside me. He’s everything I hoped I would have in a mentor.”

It’s part of the Jesuit tradition that initially drew Fague to Fordham. “I’ve found that the different perspectives here on campus have always challenged me and made me grow. People here think deeply about fundamental questions.”

Fague’s Fordham experience—his research, his courses, and his work as president of the Alternative Investments Club—landed him a full-time job with Goldman Sachs postgraduation; he also plans to pursue a graduate degree in the near future. Although he is starting a career in finance, he believes this research experience will prove to be invaluable.

“I’m just a mathematician who has really found a lot of different things I can do with math,” he says.

As executive vice president and CFO of ESPN, Driessen runs all of the multimedia entertainment company’s financial operations worldwide. She’s a key negotiator in the company’s major programming rights deals, including Major League Baseball, Monday Night Football, college football bowl games, and U.S. Open Tennis. And she was instrumental in the launches of ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNews, and espnW, a digital channel that caters to women as athletes and fans.

“I’ve attempted to be a role model for women in this company as a beacon of light to demonstrate that you can have a great career and a demanding career. But also have a family and work-life balance and give back to the people you work with and give them the opportunity to develop and grow,” she told Forbes in 2013.

Her efforts are needed, according to the Dec. 2 article that accompanies the list. Forbes notes that the women they named still “represent a true minority in a business dominated by men,” adding that less than 8.5 percent of the combined NCAA Division I athletics departments and Big Four professional sports clubs are led by women. All the more reason, the article says, why these women “should be celebrated for their ability to overcome any number of obstacles to break barriers and rise to positions of power.”

The Forbes honor is not the first time Driessen has been recognized for her leadership in the industry. In 2013, Sports Illustrated placed her at number three on its list of the 10 most influential women in sports. She was named Woman of the Year in 2014 by Women in Telecommunications, and Variety named her a Woman of Impact in 2010.

A trustee fellow at Fordham, Driessen came to the Rose Hill Gym in 2014 to talk to the women’s basketball team just after they won the program’s first-ever Atlantic-10 championship. She gave them a pep talk before their first-round matchup in the NCAA tournament and offered some career advice.

“Never sell yourself short or take yourself out of the running,” she said.

“Every new teacher needs a mentor,” said McCray, a professor in Fordham’s Graduate School of Education and co-editor of a new book that he hopes will prompt educators to give mentoring new attention.

Published Sept. 6, Mentoring with Meaning: How Educators Can Be More Professional and Effective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) is a collection of articles about mentoring teachers at all levels, from kindergarten through college and graduate school. McCray and his co-editor, Bruce Cooper, PhD, a now-retired GSE professor, also have a companion volume—Mentoring for School Quality, focused more on kindergarten through 12^th grade—coming out Oct. 1.

“We believe that these two books are the most comprehensive pieces on mentoring to date as it relates to education and educational leadership,” he said.

By reducing attrition rates, which are “extremely high” in urban schools, mentoring can bring more stability to schools and cut down on the cost of recruitment and hiring, said McCray, a former schoolteacher. But educators are busy, and mentoring programs—where they exist, that is—can become little more than an exercise in “checking off the box” to meet a central office requirement, he said.

“Sometimes you can have a mentoring process and it’s there, it’s just dangling, it’s not necessarily embedded. No one’s necessarily taking ownership of the process,” McCray said. Mentoring is effective, he said, “when the process is truly embedded in the culture and the organization, and people have ownership, and are excited to say, ‘Okay, this is going to be my mentee, and not only are we going to form a relationship in the organization, but I also want to know more about you as a person, and it’s coming from an authentic ethic of care and love,” he said.

Setting up such a mentoring system, one that ensures personal compatibility between mentor and mentee, is well worth the time and effort—and creativity— that are needed, he said.

“It takes time,” McCray said. “What we’re trying to do in this book is to get educational leaders to see that if you invest time on the front end, then it may be worth a lot more on the back end,” in terms of improved morale, teacher retention, and student achievement, McCray said.

The book’s contributors include scholars and seasoned practitioners. They cover many aspects of the topic: mentoring women and helping them reach leadership positions; mentoring over long distances, if necessary; and seeking different mentors for different things parts of the job, like handling office politics and building one’s career. Also included are inventive approaches to mentoring, along with plenty of success stories.

“There need to be more success stories,” McCray said. “Many people have spent a lot of money and invested a lot of time to become educators, and so when they come in the door we want to give them every opportunity that they deserve to succeed.”