When It’s Fordham Students, ‘I Always Answer’

“I get emails or LinkedIn requests from at least two Fordham students every day—and I always answer the call,” said Caldwell, executive director at JPMorgan Private Bank and member of the Fordham President’s Council. “Every job I’ve gotten since I graduated college has been through a Fordham alum, so I feel like it’s my duty to give back, wherever I can.”

Caldwell spoke with Fordham students at the Oct. 2 President’s Council Executive Leadership Series Mentoring Event. The evening brought together senior students and young alumni with members of the President’s Council—a group of professionals and philanthropists who provide mentorship and support to students and the University—and guest mentors.

His friend Will Finn, GABELLI ’17, a managing director at PNC, took it one step further: “Once you meet someone, build a relationship—don’t just reach out to reach out, but do some research. See what their career has been, what their education has been, and try to touch on those points.”

The Value of Face-to-Face Networking

At the evening event held in Lowenstein’s 12th-Floor Lounge, students networked with the alumni and asked questions about their career paths while gaining interviewing tips and career advice.

Hector Cruz, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill majoring in math and computer science, is currently interning at Con Edison. He’s interested in staying in that field, working toward creating a greener energy infrastructure. He said the opportunity to hear from alumni was very helpful.

“This was a good chance, especially as a graduating senior, to really get to know people and further my career, as well as further my relationship with Fordham postgrad,” said Cruz, who is the president of the Commuting Students Association.

For senior Emma Balint, the chance to connect in person was powerful, especially in the age of Zoom.

“I missed that component of getting to socialize with people face-to-face because I feel like that’s really where I thrive,” said Balint, who is majoring in psychology and minoring in bioethics at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

Finn said that he was glad students got to see the alumni network in action.

“I think networking is incredibly important within business, and people want to help each other, and that’s probably one of the best things about Fordham—the fact that people are willing to pick up that phone call,” he said.

“What my aunt kept teaching me was that I could do whatever I wanted to,” says Bartels, who began her own career on Wall Street in the 1980s. “She empowered me not to be intimidated just because I was a woman.”

Bartels grew up on City Island in the Bronx and attended community college before transferring to Fordham, where she deepened her newfound passion for analyzing the economy as “a puzzle with a lot of different moving parts.” She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Gabelli School of Business in 1985 and later earned a master’s degree in economics at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Today, Bartels is a leading investment strategist with a knack for explaining financial concepts to the general public. As head of the Research Investment Committee and of exchange traded fund strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, she has often shared her expertise on outlets like CNBC. And she continues to come back to Fordham, she says, because “they gave me a chance.”

As a member of the President’s Council, Bartels has been a guest lecturer in classes and for the Smart Women Securities club, and has served as a judge at a Shark Tank-inspired event hosted by the Gabelli School. On October 23, she’ll be attending Fordham’s third annual Women’s Philanthropy Summit, where she’ll participate in a panel discussion titled “A View from the Top: Reflections on Success and Coaching the Next Generation of Women Leaders.” It’s an important event to her, she says, because “it’s women supporting women.”

“It’s nice that Fordham is creating an environment where women can come together and share their success and do good for whatever their cause is,” she says.

“You know, women have come a long way,” Bartels says, “yet we have a lot more to do. Many women used to be hostage to a husband and their views on how to use their wealth. Now women have their own finances and their own voice. But we still represent very small ratios in most lines of business.”

That’s why continuing to engage in mentorship is also important to Bartels. “For women and men alike, how do we grow without mentorship? It’s a way of giving back,” she says.

That desire to give back is something she sees in her daughter, Lorraine, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill. Bartels says that her daughter was most attracted to Fordham’s ethos of engaging with surrounding communities. She started her Fordham experience with Urban Plunge, an optional pre-orientation program run by the University’s Center for Community Engaged Learning where students participate in community-enriching programs throughout the Bronx and Manhattan.

“She is absolutely thriving,” Bartels says of Lorraine. “And I get to see Fordham in a new way—as a parent.”

What are you most passionate about?
At the end of the day, what’s most important to me are my two children. My main responsibility is to be a mother; it has to be.

My second passion, at least professionally, is that I love to assist people with their finances. I love sitting down and helping a client understand what they have and how we can get them to where they want to go.

Another passion I have, and something I’m really learning as I get older, is how to stay healthy and have a health program for longevity, starting with diet. In your 20s, you feel like you’re invincible; you snap back like a rubber band. In your 30s you still think you’re invincible, but you start to learn that the rubber band doesn’t snap back quite as fast. By the time you’re 40, the rubber band does not always snap back. And by the time you’re 50, you really need to have everything together.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
My Aunt Bernadette taught me the value of networking, and how a lot of life is about networking and meeting people. But I didn’t appreciate it until it worked for me. When I look at my past, through Wall Street, a lot of it was connected by people I met through the years and who I stayed in touch with, who became my friends within the industry both inside and outside my company. As you go through your career, you need a mentor, right? But you also need what’s called sponsorship, people that you work with who say “you are adding value to our business.” So you never know who that might be.

On a personal level, and we’ve all heard this from many different avenues, another piece of advice that has been important has been “learn how to accept yourself, take care of yourself, and love yourself.” As you get older and wiser, you really start understanding why that was said to you so often. You’re pulled in so many different directions, especially women, and many of us struggle with that. How many women have said, “Yeah, I just don’t do anything for myself.” And then they end up unhappy. You have to love yourself enough to take care of yourself. Or you can’t help anybody, you can’t be at the top of your game. And even if you get there, you can’t enjoy it.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
My favorite place in the world is Alaska, the pristine and absolute beauty of the nature there. Especially in the winter. I get there and it’s my happy place. I’ve been there many times, fished there, seen whales and porpoises, been out on glaciers. The people are wonderful and grounded. It’s all about loving and being with nature.

My favorite place in New York is harder. I think it would be Battery Park. I worked down there for many years. My office was overlooking the water and I took the ferry twice a day. And I just loved being there on the river.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
So this is probably going to be very odd. Early in my career, my aunt told me to take this course on technical analysis. And the book we had to get for it was Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by the teacher, John Murphy. When I read that book in that course, I was like, “This is it for me.” It changed my life; it gave me confidence that I could actually do it. He wrote it in a way that I could understand. For me, that was a light bulb moment.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
I’m going to say economics professor Dominick Salvatore. Not only is the man brilliant, and not only does he write great textbooks, he teaches in a way that makes economics exciting. It completely lights up, and he has this magnetism that comes through in his teaching. He’s great at taking concepts and explaining them so any student can understand. And that’s an important part of what I have to do in my work now, take the most complex situation or topics and be able to explain them to any audience.

This year, six Pioneering Women in Philanthropy will be honored for the personal and financial support they have given Fordham. Leaders in their fields, each one has invested in bettering their communities and the world in their own way. Here, they share their thoughts on the importance of mentorship, empathy, self-confidence, and more on the path to success—for them and for all women.

In cosmetics, which is where I particularly grew up, we had these wonderful [women]  role models. … If you’ve been given this road map and you see that others have gone before you and achieved, you never have in your mind the notion of failure. You have the notion that you can do it too, if you’re good enough and smart enough and make the right decisions.
—Rose Marie Bravo, CBE, TMC ’71

Bravo grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of an Italian-born barber and a seamstress from Sicily. A Bronx High School of Science graduate, she earned a bachelor’s degree in English cum laude at Fordham’s Thomas More College in 1971 and later held leadership positions in several major fashion businesses—including Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue. She took over Burberry in 1997 and is widely credited with transforming the classic brand and greatly expanding its markets during her nine-year tenure as CEO. In 2006, Queen Elizabeth II recognized Bravo’s achievements in promoting British fashion, naming her a Commander of the British Empire.

Bravo will deliver a keynote address, “From the Bronx to Buckingham Palace,” at this year’s Women’s Philanthropy Summit.

I entered the work world bolstered by an amazing education in liberal arts that made me feel strong and confident. Still, to rise up the corporate ladder meant more than just feeling confident. I soon learned that it meant persistence and resilience, not being afraid to ask for help, and so much more. I quickly realized the importance of communicating, listening, adaptability, and using words like “us” “we” and “with.” I learned that the best leaders hire strong people, set goals, don’t make excuses, are empathetic, and understand their own self-worth.
—Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, Ph.D., UGE ’62, GSAS ’65, ’71

Dursi Cunniffe grew up in a family of eight, including two brothers who also went to Fordham. Fluent in French and Italian, she studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Perugia as well as Fordham, where she earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in French literature. She had a successful career as an executive in the cosmetics industry and, later, in executive recruiting. She spent 13 years at Revlon, rising to vice president at a time when that title was a rarity for women. She was a senior vice president and the key strategist in recruiting senior talent at Cablevision Systems Corporation before retiring in 2011. Her husband, Maurice “Mo” Cunniffe, FCRH ’54, is a fellow Fordham grad.

From my parents, I was always encouraged to be kind and fair—and to always let people know they are valued and loved. I think women have that capacity to inspire people by their passion, compassion, and empathy. Women stand tall for their beliefs and by nature have the ability to listen and compromise. We know how to bring people together and we are problem solvers.
—Barbara Dane, Ph.D., GSS ’67, ’85

Dane is a retired professor of clinical social work who has maintained a private clinical practice, working with dying and grieving persons and their families, since 1971. She earned both her M.S.W. and Ph.D. in gerontology from Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service. She has taught at Fordham, Columbia University, and NYU, and has a substantial publishing record in social work. Dane was awarded a summer fellowship from the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on aging, and she was among the first recipients of a social work leadership grant from the Soros Foundation’s Project on Death in America. Her research on Thai women coping with HIV/AIDS and the role of meditation was presented at the Seventh International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in Tromsø, Norway.

What I know is that we each have the opportunity to change a life every day, to share wisdom from experiences that can help one another, even if we don’t get to hear the triumphant follow-up story. What counts is what we give to lift others up around us, no matter how big or small our gift may be.
—Valerie Rainford, FCRH ’86

Rainford is head of advancing black leaders and diversity advancement strategies at JPMorgan Chase. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham. Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase, she served at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for 21 years, where she rose to become the most senior black woman there and the first to rise to senior vice president. The author of an award-winning memoir, Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium (Eloree Press, 2014), she has dedicated much of her life to uplifting others by sharing her story of perseverance, as she did with local Bronx students on the Rose Hill campus in August.

Rainford will deliver a keynote address, “Paying It Forward: A Journey of Resilience and Giving Back,” at this year’s Women’s Philanthropy Summit.

Being a leader is about continuous learning, hands-on engagement, and the power of giving time and resources. Women do this exceptionally well. The challenge is to understand the exciting opportunities for change, and to still find time for self-care and reflection.
—Susan Conley Salice, FCRH ’82

Conley Salice is the president of the Salice Family Foundation. She also serves on the boards and chairs the development committees of Fordham University, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, and Greenwich Hospital. Before shifting her focus to philanthropy, she worked in the business sector for two decades. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Fordham College at Rose Hill and a master’s degree in fundraising and philanthropy from New York University. She was one of the keynote speakers at the inaugural Women’s Philanthropy Summit in 2017.

Women who have succeeded in business need to discuss how we navigated the workplace. These experiences are especially relevant today as some business leaders and politicians are seeking to erode the progress that women have made in this world. Women continually face discrimination based on their gender and have an especially tough path to managerial roles in many organizations. A man is considered tough when he makes a strong point while a woman is considered to be too emotional when making a similar point in a similar tone of voice. These stereotypes need to be put to rest. We must lead through a combination of common sense, empathy, and determination.
—Donna Smolens, FCRH ’79, GSAS ’81

Smolens has been a senior advisor at Insight Partners, a leading global private equity and venture capital firm, since 2015. Prior to joining Insight, she worked at Portfolio Advisors LLC, was a voting member on the investment committees of numerous Portfolio Advisors funds, and was on the advisory boards of 13 private equity funds. She previously worked at Crossover Ventures, DLJ Securities Private Fund Group, General Motors Investment Management, and New York Life Insurance Company. She graduated from Fordham University with both a B.A. and an M.A. in economics.

“You know that kid on your block who was older than you and was great at sports, who had a great dog that he didn’t have to walk on a leash, who everybody wanted to be when they grew up? He wore that jacket,” says Gulotta, who grew up in Queens, “and that’s when I first came to know of Fordham.”

Gulotta went on to graduate from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in 1982 and, after two years, returned to Fordham for law school. Now a Manhattan real estate attorney with his own firm and the founding CEO of a data protection company, he shares his love of Fordham with others through teaching and mentorship.

Gulotta says he was drawn to real estate law because it allows him to work on a transaction with a client from start to finish. And it was particularly important for him to start his own firm because he wanted to create his own culture—a culture inspired by one he found within the Fordham community.

“I wanted to create my own soil, if you will, where I could blossom the most” and help employees and clients do the same, Gulotta says. “As a businessperson, I don’t want to take advantage of people. I want to invest in my employees and let them know I am loyal to them so they too could thrive. And I wanted to figure out what my clients were going to want before they asked for it.”

That’s what drove him to co-found Real Estate Data Shield in 2012. He had noticed a big compliance gap in the mortgage industry: Banks and other lenders regularly share consumers’ non-public personal information (Social Security numbers, tax records, etc.) with title companies, attorneys, and other third-party vendors—not all of whom adhere to the same strict laws when it comes to safeguarding consumers’ data.

His response wasn’t what one might expect. Instead of developing a technological solution, he helped create a compliance and information security training program specifically tailored to the real estate industry. “That’s because the single greatest risk factor in any kind of information security is the human,” he says. “Depending on the study you read, about 40% of all incidents can be traced back to human misfeasance or malfeasance.”

It’s what he’s best known for in the field, and it’s an insight he shares with his students at Fordham’s Real Estate Institute, where he teaches a course on legal concepts in real estate. The institute, founded in 2016, offers an M.S. and several graduate and professional certificate programs in real estate finance, development, and construction management. “I love working with the students,” he says. “For most of them, it’s their first Fordham experience. And I get to give them guidance and mentorship, to bridge the gaps and actually get down in the trenches and coach them in a personalized way, just as my Fordham professors coached me.”

He brings that same mindset to the Fordham Mentoring Program, where he has been volunteering for 10 years. Each year he is paired with a new mentee, but he’s also done training sessions for his fellow mentors. His biggest tip? “I tell them that before you start offering advice, listen. Really listen and understand who you’re working with, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their aspirations are, and what they need from you” he says. “Build trust and be a good listener.”

He is proud to have played a small role in how the 15-year-old program has blossomed, growing from just a few dozen mentors in its first year to more than 200 today. Gulotta has been most impressed with the addition of new events like speed interviewing and social outings, where mentors and mentees can bond.

While he has remained connected to all of his previous mentees in some way, he has formed a particularly strong bond with his first: Brandon Brown, GABELLI ’10, who was recently promoted to director of pro scouting for the Philadelphia Eagles.

“Chris was like a sounding board for me,” Brown says of Gulotta’s role in helping him figure out his next steps when he realized he wouldn’t have a playing career in the NFL. “He was like, ‘Hey, can I help you think through that?’ He wasn’t pushing. That’s where I think the foundation for a long-term relationship was built for us.

“I don’t even consider him a mentor anymore,” Brown says. “I consider him a family friend who I lean on heavily for advice.”

Gulotta says he gets more out of working with each student than he ever anticipated.

“You know, there’s a counterintuitive reward from giving. You think if you give something, you have less, because you just gave something away,” he says. “But it actually comes back in spades.”

Fordham Five

What are you most passionate about?
In business, always focusing on being relevant and being known for doing it right.

In my family life as a husband, father, son, et cetera, I’m most passionate about understanding how to best support those I care most about—being mindful of giving them what they need, the way they need it, as much as possible.

And, on a very personal level, it’s two things. The first is staying calm enough, through all the stress and multitasking, so as to let those great realizations form or emerge and not rush into bad decisions. It’s the Xing Yi concept of “no mind,” erasing the cluttered blackboard that is our mind so these great ideas can present themselves. And the second is challenging myself physically, being willing to see and feel my limits and working to see those measures change, hopefully for the better.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Actually, there are a few, but two are from Father John Adam, who taught me at Fordham: “Life doesn’t work if you don’t keep your promises.” And “The mind is like a parachute; if it’s not open, it doesn’t work.” I think he meant the first one just as much about yourself as about others. We all have rationalizations to get through the day, but if we really start lying to ourselves, life just doesn’t work. The second piece of advice was just very vivid and stuck with me. It reminds me to be as open-minded as possible.

What’s your favorite place in New York City? In the world?
In New York City, it would be either Central Park or Riverside Park. Both offer incredible views, allowing us New Yorkers the opportunity to find calm, run, bike, walk, visit with friends, and get some balance from all the stress we find in the other parts of NYC.

In the world, it would be a toss-up between Cathedral Brook, which is a remote ski trail at Belleayre Mountain in New York, and Northern Italy’s Val D’Aosta. It’s lined with former Roman forts (now museums and inns), has gorgeous, glacier-fed, fast-flowing rivers, and the Nebbiolo grape is happy there.

Of course, any mountain, beach, forest, greenway, or my living room with my family and pooches also works.

Name a book that has had a lasting influence on you.
This is the toughest question you’ve asked. At 21, in my senior year at FCLC, I took a course called Philosophy of the Absurd with Professor Bernadette Bucher, who was born and raised in France. She had actually studied under Jean Paul Sartre. Assigned readings included Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus,” written during the Nazi occupation of France.

We all know the story of the Greek myth. Sisyphus had been naughty, and the gods had sentenced him to pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down each day—an eternity of hopeless struggle. Yet Camus tells us that he envisions Sisyphus happy or content, for he has accepted his fate and his struggle. And in doing so, he rises above it and has ultimately found contentment.

Life throws a lot of curveballs at us, both good and bad. It’s tempting to give up or think we’re victims. Facing challenges—understanding that the sooner we start trying to tackle them, the better off we are—and then smiling at and accepting the course of our journey was my personal takeaway.

Who is the Fordham grad or professor you admire most?
This is the easiest question, but I cannot answer it without mentioning both the Fordham grad and professor I admire most.

The Fordham grad would be my very first mentee, Brandon Brown. Nearly 10 years ago, he was a young man on a football scholarship at Fordham. In his junior year, he realized that for various reasons the NFL draft wasn’t a likely possibility for him. It was a sad realization for a truly gifted athlete who worked tirelessly since he was 10 years old on his fitness, technique, and understanding of the game. Yet he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, accepted this new reality, improved his academics, attended law school, and found his way back to his true passion as a football scout for Boston College. Within two years he moved up to the NFL as a scout for the Indianapolis Colts and was later recruited by the Philadelphia Eagles, where he now plays an integral role for the 2018 Super Bowl champions as the director of pro scouting.

Most mentor-mentee stories involve the mentor inspiring the mentee. But thankfully, in this instance, Brandon’s constant pushing of that boulder up the hill has and continues to inspire me.

As for Fordham professors, both Father Adam and Professor Bernard Gilligan, one an actual Jesuit and the other a virtual Jesuit, demonstrated a level of care, kindness, and joy in their teaching craft by helping scores of Fordham students like myself learn how to think, how to question, how to articulate, and how to reason. They are the embodiment of what makes Fordham special for me and are the very reason that I mentored Brandon and scores of great young women and men—and will joyfully continue to do so.