The annual Fordham Founder’s Dinner, held at the Glasshouse, raised $2.5 million for the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund, which supports scholarships for 48 Fordham Founder’s Scholars.

The University also paid tribute to this year’s Fordham Founder’s Award recipients: John L. Lumelleau, FCRH ’74, and Loretta Franklin Lumelleau, and Robert “Bob” J. O’Shea, GABELLI ’87, PAR, and Michele K. O’Shea, FCRH ’88, PAR.

With a theme of “Transforming Our World,” the dinner was a cause for multiple celebrations, said Fordham President Tania Tetlow.

“We celebrate the gift of Fordham and all that she has meant to us. We celebrate our beloved community, friendships new and old, the family we have chosen and built together,” she said to the event’s 900 guests.

“And we celebrate the deep joy of giving back. We look at the shining faces of the student scholars here tonight, all dressed up in their finest, full of talent and possibility, full of hope. We celebrate the enormous pleasure we receive from helping them.”

(Watch Tetlow’s speech here.)

A Life Transformed by Generosity

Benjamin Coco, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior majoring in English and physics, spoke on behalf of all the Founder’s Scholars. He told attendees that their support had allowed him to pursue his love for both the sciences and creative writing. That includes writing his debut novel, Johnny Outlaw: The Man With No Past.

“I’m searching for an agent to be published—in case there are any in the audience,” he said to laughs.

Coco said his Founder’s scholarship enabled him to conduct summer research at Notre Dame University. This May, he’ll finish a senior thesis, “Emission Spectroscopy of Red Giant Stars.”

“My mom moved to the U.S. from Grenada when she was 15 and has worked hard ever since, always emphasizing the importance of education,” he said, noting that Fordham’s Jesuit ideals called to him.

“All Founder’s Scholars have had our lives changed by your generosity and have been given the opportunity to thrive to the best of our abilities. From the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of this year’s Founder’s Scholars, thank you!”

(Watch Coco’s speech here.)

Lessons from a Daily Commute

The evening also featured a new emcee: Lauren Scala, FCRH ’04.

A four-time Emmy Award-winning television host, reporter, and producer at NBC 4 in New York, Scala joked that her time riding the Ram Van actually helped her career as a traffic anchor for 10 years.

“So whoever saw me in the morning, it was Fordham I have to thank for being able to authentically report on the Cross Bronx Expressway,” she said. “And I still smile when I see a Ram Van in the wild.”

Always Making a Difference

Fordham also changed the life of Founder’s honoree John Lumelleau, a retired president and CEO of the insurance brokerage Lockton Companies who has served on the University’s Board of Trustees since 2018. His wife, Loretta Lumelleau, a graduate of Lehman College, worked in publishing and taught in New York City schools before retiring to raise the couple’s three children.

Over the past decades, they have contributed generously to Fordham as well as a range of other causes that help young people thrive. Their giving has benefited Fordham’s football program and other athletics programs, as well as the Student Emergency Fund.

Lumelleau noted that the family’s ties to Fordham run deep, as his brother Richard, FCRH ’64, sisters Cathleen Marasco, FCRH ’82, and Jeanette Kavanagh, FCRH ’79, and his niece, Elizabeth Casey, FCRH ’98, GSE ’05, attended Fordham.

The excellence and tradition that are the “essence” of Fordham have, in fact, lived in his mind since childhood. His earliest memories of music, he said, were the “The Star Spangled Banner,” “God Bless America,” and Fordham’s fight song “The Ram,” which Richard would lead while his uncle “banged it out on the piano.”

“It feels as if Fordham has always been present, always been making a difference. This evening is a critical part of making sure that it is.”

(Watch Lumelleau’s speech here.)

In a video that was shown during the dinner, Founder’s Scholars shared what scholarships meant to them.

The Value of Giving Back

Bob and Michele O’Shea are co-founding benefactors of the O’Shea Center for Credit Analysis and Investment, which launched at the Gabelli School of Business in 2022.

Bob, who was a member of Fordham’s Board of Trustees from 2006 to 2012, is a former partner at Goldman Sachs and the current chairman of the global investment firm Silver Point Capital. Michele is the founder of O’Shea Yoga, as well as a professional life coach who leads workshops on personal empowerment for women. Three of the couple’s four children have graduated from Fordham.

The O’Sheas have given to philanthropic organizations in the U.S. and abroad that support education, health, veterans, public safety, and the alleviation of poverty. At Fordham, they have contributed to scholarships, career services, track and field, and other athletics programs.

Bob tied the importance of giving back to his own Fordham story. He attended thanks to a scholarship offered to him by former track and field coach Tom Dewey, who was in attendance, and four seniors on the team made room for “a twerpy freshman” to move onto campus with them.

“Almost all seniors would never even entertain the idea of accepting an incoming freshman as their roommate—talk about being ‘men in the service of these others,’” he said.

“Michele and I have had a blessed life, and to be standing in front of all of you—we are filled with gratitude and love.”

(Watch O’Shea’s speech here.)

Learn more about the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund.

Guests were treated to a performance by the Fordham University Choir.

O’Shea was featured in a virtual fireside chat with Michael Gatto, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business, as a part of the Gabelli School’s Centennial Speaker Series. The pair also gave an update on the new O’Shea Center for Credit Analysis and Investment at the Gabelli School of Business, which was founded thanks to $2 million in donations from O’Shea; his wife Michele, FCRH ’88; and Gatto, who will be the center’s director.

During the event, O’Shea and Gatto touched on a key benefit of the center: giving Gabelli students the kind of credit industry insight that other universities don’t provide at the undergraduate level, helping them stand out and succeed in the job market.

Pounding the Pavement

O’Shea was a “quintessential Fordham student,” according to Gatto. He’s one of five children, his dad was a New York City police officer, and he attended on a scholarship. While studying at Fordham, he decided he wanted to go into investment banking.

“I applied [for jobs]  at every single major investment bank on Wall Street. And every single investment bank rejected me,” O’Shea said. “I used to hand deliver my resumes; I would take the D train down and try to hand them in to the human resources department in hope of getting an interview.”

O’Shea said that he was rejected by “a minimum of 50 firms,” but with some persistence he landed an interview at Security Pacific and impressed them enough to get a job working in the leveraged loan market. O’Shea said that while working there he had an idea for trading loans on the secondary market, where one investor purchases debt from another, and pitched this idea to other firms, including Bear Stearns.

“Bear Stearns, as a firm, was less focused on pedigree—it was a gritty firm, a very entrepreneurial firm, a firm that wanted young, hungry, driven people,” O’Shea said. “So when I came in and walked them through this idea that I had, and explained that I thought this was a really large market, and no one was really involved with it, they were the type of firm that would take the shot.”

One of the Youngest Partners at Goldman Sachs

After working at Bear Stearns for a few years, O’Shea was invited to dinner by a partner at Goldman Sachs, who told him that they wanted to start a bank loan business. O’Shea said that the partner laid out their plan, which was to underwrite bank loans the way they previously had with stocks and bonds.

“I told him, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t do it that way,’” he said. “What I would recommend is that you go in and become the number one market maker in loans [and]  create an institutional product around bank loans.”

O’Shea said that the partner loved the idea and brought him on board to do it.

O’Shea “created the secondary trading market of bank loans,” Gatto said. “That opened up a whole bunch of new industries, especially for people like me who specialize in distressed debt investing,” he said.

At Goldman Sachs, O’Shea built a team to cover the bank loan industry and, at age 29, became one of the youngest people in the company’s history to be named a partner. He went on to run the company’s high yield business and their collateralized loan obligation business.

But O’Shea said as he was moving up, he began to notice that “the more senior that I was getting, the further away that I was getting from the business itself.”

Launching His Own Firm

In 2002, that prompted him and one of his partners at Goldman Sachs, Edward Mulé, to launch Silver Point Capital, a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut, that focuses on “credit and special situations investments.” Today the firm manages about $15 billion in assets.

O’Shea credits the company’s success to hiring the right people, including Gatto, who came on three months after they launched and became the firm’s first non-founding partner.

“It’s all about the people—if you hire exceptional people, and you build a culture of teamwork, you can produce exceptional results,” he said.

Launching the Credit Analysis Center: ‘Not One Other University’ Focused on Credit Training for Undergrads

In their work, both Gatto and O’Shea said that they began noticing a need for training in the credit markets.

“Credit drives our economy, the global economy, the U.S. economy—if you look at the history of the country, credit markets are at the center of the growth of the U.S. economy,” O’Shea said. “Without credit, businesses can’t grow at the same rate.”

Previously, banks handled the credit lending process, Gatto said.

“[The banks] put them through a six month credit training program, because it’s technical, but now, banks are no longer the driver of leverage lending—it’s private lending funds, public business development companies, and they’re not training people,” he said. “There is a demand for credit-trained people, and not one other university is focused on it today at the undergraduate level.”

Established in 2020, the center will formally launch next year. It will emphasize three main components—education, networking opportunities, and connection to industries.

“There is no concentration that combines accounting, finance, and how to assess companies’ credit profiles—that skill is tremendously valuable even if you were going to leave the credit world and go into the equity world. It’s a competitive advantage to understand,” O’Shea said.

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School, said the O’Shea Center will be “a center of excellence that bridges the gap between academia and financial markets.”

“A critical part of the center’s work,” she said, “will be helping students to gain a competitive edge in an underserved financial area.”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., said that the center would be “bringing our students and professors together with the professional world and the evolving realities of 21st-century finance.”

“We believe this sort of collaboration is essential for the Gabelli School’s mission, and what that mission is, is the education of compassionate business leaders that drive positive global change,” he said.

The center, known as the O’Shea Center for Credit Analysis and Investment, was created thanks to two generous contributions totaling $2 million from Robert O’Shea, GABELLI ’87, and Michele O’Shea, FCRH ’88, and Michael Gatto, an adjunct professor at the Gabelli School.

With their gift, the O’Sheas have directed $1 million toward the center. They also donated an additional $250,000 to be split evenly between the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and the Gabelli School of Business Centennial Fund, which supports faculty and student research as well as curriculum development.

O’Shea—a co-founder of the Connecticut-based hedge fund Silverpoint Capital and a former partner at Goldman Sachs—has deep Fordham roots. He and his wife Michele are alumni, as are their three sons, Robert, FCRH ’13, Conor, GABELLI ’17, and Parker, GABELLI ’19.

He said he hoped the new project would become a “center of excellence” at the Gabelli School.

“It’s about creating areas where we can bring in professors and leaders who will dedicate tremendous time, commitment, and effort to help bridge the gap between academia and the financial markets,” he said.

The launch of the O’Shea Center was announced at an Oct. 27 event featuring Gatto, who will be the center’s director. Gatto, who is also a partner at Silverpoint, has been teaching the Credit Analysis class to undergraduates at the Gabelli School for six years.

“When he joined us at Silverpoint, Michael often spoke about his passion for teaching. So, I encouraged him to create a course that we could offer at Fordham that would take advantage of his extensive background in restructuring companies and his deep experience in teaching,” O’Shea said.

“It was a natural fit, as Gatto was the director of Citibank’s Credit Training Program early in his career. The program Michael ran for Citibank was considered a mini-MBA. He later started his own company, designing and teaching credit training programs for Citibank and other global banks around the world,” O’Shea said.

“Michael has been involved in companies in all types of credit situations, including restructurings. The center will provide an education in finance that you will not find at an undergraduate level anywhere else in the country. Gabelli students will learn how to assess risk-adjusted return across complex debt investments through a curriculum based on Michael’s experience,” he said.

“In addition, as the concentration will offer its graduates so many different career options, we will embed career advice on how to leverage the concentration into a multitude of jobs where there is great demand in the economy.”

Giving Students a Competitive Edge

Gatto, who also contributed $1 million to the center, said he envisions three areas of focus for the center: Teaching, networking, and research. On the curriculum level, he said the establishment of a secondary concentration in credit analysis will make the Gabelli School stand out in an area that is underserved.

“Historically, the investment banks would just hire the best and brightest and have to train them in three- and six-month credit programs. I used to design those and teach those around the world. It’s a technical skill, and no one was teaching it at the undergraduate level,” he said.

“It gives Fordham a real opportunity to develop a curriculum and train students, and those students are going to be better prepared to get the jobs and succeed at those jobs.”

Supporting Conferences and Research

The second area, focused on networking, conferences, and professional development, will build on the success of previous Gabelli School events: two extremely well-attended conferences on distressed debt, held last year and in 2018.

“There was a confidence because we had these two conferences that were in the middle of the day, so people had to take the day of work off, and they both sold out immediately,” Gatto said.
“You had people who showed up who wanted to stand in the back and watch it, and we had very distinguished guests who participated in panel discussions.”

The third area, he said, will be working to connect fellow members of the faculty with private sector actors on Wall Street who can aid with research.

Industry-Relevant Education

Donna Rapaccioli, Ph.D., dean of the Gabelli School, said the center is part of a larger goal to implement a curriculum that is relevant in today’s business world. She compared it to the Gabelli Center for Global Security and Analysis, which focuses on the equity markets.

“This is branching out into a new, very industry-relevant space for us, which will complement the work that the Gabelli Center is doing,” she said.

“It’s about industry relevance, and connectivity, and making sure our students are educated in a way that allows them to add value right away and hit the ground running.”

Rapaccioli spoke with Gatto at the Oct. 27 event, a fireside chat that was part of the school’s centennial virtual speaker series. In one exchange, she asked him why someone should choose to invest in debt versus equity. Gatto explained that because the loan markets were less liquid and less efficient than the equity markets, those investors who focused on credit could create real Alpha for their clients (Alpha being excess returns relative to the risk of the investment).

O’Shea also emphasized the importance of debt markets and the need for students to be educated about debt and credit.

“Credit drives our global economy. This program will prepare students on how to assess the creditworthiness of companies as they learn about debt capital markets. The debt markets in the U.S. are larger than the equity markets. The new center will allow students to develop a deeper understanding of evaluating risk-adjusted return across credit markets; it will be a complement to our existing value investing program in the equity markets at the Gabelli School.”