“Receiving the Guggenheim is an incredible affirmation of support and belief in my practice, and a reminder of the importance of process, which pushes the work forward,” Baker said.

A Connection to Indigenous Art and Storytelling

Baker grew up across the northern plains of the United States, where her father’s job with the National Park Service—as the first American Indian superintendent of a national park—took the family to areas around sites like Chickasaw National Recreation Area, Little Bighorn Battlefield, and Mount Rushmore.

As a member of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes of North Dakota, Baker was surrounded by Indigenous art and storytelling as a child, but it wasn’t until she began her studies at Fordham that she decided to pursue her own artistic path.

“I had no idea I wanted to be an artist when I went to Fordham for undergrad. At the time, my biggest mission was to just get to NYC,” she told Autre magazine in 2022. “I took an art class [and] something clicked. … I ended up working with incredible professors who both challenged and supported my work.”

One of those professors was Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, now head of the visual arts program. “Teresa was a vital team member, consistently asking probing questions to her peers and regarding her own production,” he said. “The Guggenheim Fellowship is further confirmation of her extraordinarily smart artistic practice, fortitude, and natural talent.”

Using Mixed Materials to ‘Offer an Expansive Sense of Land’

Following her time at Fordham, Baker earned an M.F.A. from California College of the Arts. Her mixed-media practice combines natural and artificial materials. Much of her recent work uses an Astroturf base with elements ranging from yarn and spray paint to wood branches and animal hide. She experiments both with geometry and geography, with irregularly shaped pieces that resemble land carved by human borders and lines and curves that evoke rivers and paths.

“Mapping the Territory,” Baker’s 2024 solo show at New York’s Broadway Gallery, was praised by The New York Times for its “sublime beauty.”

“You can sense the vastness of that landscape in her works, which suggest aerial views of Earth,” the reviewers wrote. “However, these are Native maps, not Western European ones. They’re not geographically precise documents intended to exert control. They offer an expansive sense of land as something not just seen or claimed, but experienced and moved through.”

Baker is represented by de boer, Los Angeles, and her work has been exhibited at institutions like the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, the Arts Club of Chicago, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Hammer Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Portland (Maine) Museum of Art recently acquired her work.

Last fall, one of Baker’s pieces, Sunset Turns South, was included in “Amarcord,” a group show at Fordham’s Ildiko Butler Gallery featuring work by more than 30 visual arts alumni from the past three decades.

Chartered in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation offers its fellowships to help “artists, writers, scholars, and scientists at the highest levels of achievement pursue the work they were meant to do.” Past recipients in the fine arts field include Isamu Noguchi, Romare Bearden, and Faith Ringgold.

Dick Barnett, a two-time NBA champion with the legendary New York Knicks teams of the 1970s and, later, a passionate educator who earned a doctorate from Fordham, died on April 27 in Largo, Florida. He was 88.

Barnett was born in Gary, Indiana, and attended Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University (now Tennessee State), where he led the school’s basketball team to three consecutive National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championships, from 1957 to 1959. He was drafted by the Syracuse Nationals in 1959 and went on to play 14 seasons in the NBA—the last nine of which were with the Knicks.

Two Knicks Titles and a Passion for Education

Known for his unorthodox jump shot, Barnett was named an All-Star in 1968 and was part of the Knicks teams that won championships in 1970 and 1973. Those teams—which also featured Earl Monroe, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Bill Bradley, Willis Reed, and Dave DeBusschere—were known for their balanced rosters and tough defense. Adaptability was a key to their success, Barnett told Fordham Magazine in 2018. “You make whatever adjustments that are necessary to function in a multicultural society. All of that is related to what we accomplished playing basketball with the New York Knicks. And one of the very fortunate things is that those kind of relationships that were established on the court have lasted a lifetime.”

The Knicks retired his number, 12, in 1990, and he was voted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024.

Although he didn’t graduate from college before turning pro, Barnett placed a great amount of importance on education during his playing days and beyond. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education from Cal Poly while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers and got a master’s degree in public administration from New York University while he was a Knick. He earned a Ph.D. in education from Fordham in 1991.

“I wanted to get my doctorate and go to the highest point that I possibly could,” he said. “Very few professional athletes have really gone down that road. I thought it would open doors that perhaps were not open before.”

Barnett taught sports management at St. John’s University from 2003 to 2007, and he spent much of his later life speaking to youth and writing about sports, race, and culture, including through the publishing imprint he founded, Fall Back Baby Productions. His Dr. Richard Barnett Foundation offered scholarships to high school students from underserved communities across New York City and sponsored career exploration events. 

Cementing the Legacy of a Historic College Program

Barnett also dedicated himself to getting his Tennessee A&I teams wider recognition. The teams featured all Black players—the first team from a historically Black college or university to win any national championship, and the first college team to win three back-to-back championships. They were collectively inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019, and last year, the surviving members were invited to the White House, where they met with Vice President Kamala Harris. His efforts to gain attention for those teams were featured in a documentary, The Dream Whisperer, broadcast on PBS in 2022.

The title came from Barnett seeing himself as a “dream whisperer,” as he hoped to inspire young people to follow their own goals.

“Martin Luther King Jr. said a long time ago that to live one’s dream, you’ve got to reach down into the inner chambers of your own soul … and sign your own Emancipation Proclamation,” he told Fordham Magazine in 2018. “And that has been always a guiding light in my life and the message that I’ve taken forward to young people.”

Barnett is survived by his wife, Erma; his daughter, Tona; his son, Jeren; a sister, Jean Tibbs; and grandchildren.

Just ask Jonathan Stafford, the company’s artistic director.

He’s one of dozens of current and former City Ballet dancers who completed much if not all of their coursework while performing full time with the world-renowned company one block north of Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus. Stafford retired as a dancer in 2014 and, two years later, earned a Fordham degree in organizational leadership that he says has given him “valuable tools and resources” to lead the company’s artistic staff.

Of his 94 current City Ballet dancers, 25 have graduated from Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies (PCS), eight are currently enrolled, and several more recently submitted applications.

Fordham Magazine caught up with four former City Ballet dancers who have used their Fordham education to create successful—and perhaps surprising—second careers.

Dr. Savannah Lowery, PCS ’15
Majors: Mathematics and Economics
Second Career: Physician (Obstetrics and Gynecology)

While Savannah Lowery started taking ballet lessons at the age of 3, she was also “raised in a hospital,” she says, thanks to two physician parents. After enrolling at Fordham in 2008, she initially figured she’d use her math and economics majors to prepare her for a future in finance. But once she got some encouragement that she wouldn’t be too old to begin a second career as a doctor, Lowery was determined to follow in her parents’ footsteps.

She stepped off the City Ballet stage in 2018, three years after earning her Fordham degree, and earned a medical degree at the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine on Long Island in 2024. She is now a resident OB-GYN at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, a field she gained particular interest in while dancing. “In my generation, women started having children while dancing professionally,” she says. “And I found myself wanting to hear their birth stories.”

And while her second career comes with just as much pressure and as many long days as her first, Lowery says it’s just as fulfilling.

“I’m super grateful that I found two things that have made me extremely happy in my life,” she says. “I think every dancer should find something else that they think would make them just as happy as dancing and to hold onto it.”

Delia Peters, FCLC ’85
Major: Middle East Studies
Second Career: Litigation Attorney

Delia Peters began dancing with the New York City Ballet in 1963 and enrolled at Fordham in the early 1980s, when far fewer dancers decided to pursue a college degree—or anything else—outside of dance. A voracious reader who always enjoyed school, the Brooklyn-born, Queens-raised Peters knew that college would be part of her plan for a second act.

She majored in Middle East studies and, right after earning her Fordham degree in 1985, enrolled at Columbia Law School, balancing those classes with her role in the City Ballet corps until she retired the next year. When she got her law degree in 1988, she set out on a long, successful career as an attorney, representing companies in the aviation and nautical sectors—and even her former employer, the New York City Ballet.

“Fordham gave me a richer life,” Peters says. “When you’re a dancer, you go where you’re told, you do what you’re told, and for how long. Suddenly at Fordham, people were asking me what I thought. It was a revelation. It changed my life.”

Cameron Dieck, PCS ’17
Major: Economics
Second Career: Investment Banking and Private Equity

Cameron Dieck is a planner by nature. So, after starting at the New York City Ballet in 2007, he wasted little time—just a year—before he began “chipping away” at a college degree at Fordham. As a mathematically inclined child of two physicians, Dieck was drawn to studying economics at Fordham, hoping to set himself up for a finance career in New York after his ballet days were behind him. And he did just that.

Just a week after his final City Ballet performance in June 2018, Dieck began a job as an investment banking associate at Credit Suisse, where he stayed for three years. From there, he became a vice president of investment at J.P. Morgan, and just this past December, he began his current role as a vice president of private equity at Goldman Sachs’ Petershill Partners. At Petershill, which provides capital to alternative asset managers, Dieck says much of his job involves “getting to know different managers, assessing their track record, and making some judgments about whether we should be spending time to invest in them.”

For both Dieck and his wife, Unity Phelan, a 2021 Fordham graduate who is still a principal dancer with City Ballet, studying at Fordham allowed them to plan for the future with a new level of confidence.

“We’re grateful to have a college experience and for what that college experience has provided for us,” he says. “I’m so proud to have been a dancer. My wife is so proud to be a dancer. But we’re also very proud to say that it doesn’t define who we are and what our capabilities are.”

Gwyneth Muller, PCS ’15
Major: English
Second Career: Arts Management and Consulting

Gwyneth Muller finished her senior year of high school and became a full-time company member at the City Ballet in 2000. Almost immediately, she realized she missed being a student. “Academics grounded me and gave me something else to focus on,” she says. “And I realized it was going to be really important for my life to not be entirely centered around dance.”

She enrolled at Fordham in 2002 and decided on an English major. Being immersed in literature and drama helped Muller realize she wanted to continue working in the arts, and after graduating in 2015 and retiring from the City Ballet the next year, she began a dual-degree graduate program at Yale that earned her both an M.F.A. in theater management and an M.B.A.

Today, she is a performing arts management consultant at A.D. Hamingson & Associates, working with clients like the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and the Seagle Festival on capital campaign management, strategic planning, and development. She is also a producer with SCENE, an arts event production company with opera singer Anthony Roth Costanzo. She credits her education at Fordham with opening her eyes to the paths available to her.

“I was growing as a person,” she says of her time as a student. “I was becoming more well-rounded, opening myself up to new ways of thinking and new texts, taking multidisciplinary courses. I was applying myself, I was exploring, I was learning what I wanted to do. And then when I graduated, I didn’t just feel like I had a backup plan. I felt like I had just really set myself up as a human being ready to pursue other options.”

For Fordham grads Dana Covarrubias and Lilian Rebelo, working on the stylish murder mystery comedy Only Murders in the Building—alongside stars Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short—has been a killer experience. The show, which gives its three podcaster lead characters a new murder to solve each season, has earned critical praise and devoted fans both for its striking design and comedic performances.

Costuming the ‘Best-Dressed Show on TV’

Growing up in San Antonio, Texas, Covarrubias was “obsessed with clothes and fabric.”

“Most parents take their kids to a playground to play, and my parents took me to the mall,” she half-jokes. “I would hide in the clothing racks and just rub all the fabrics on my face.”

Covarrubias also became obsessed with theater as a sixth grader, and once she arrived at Fordham, the interdisciplinary nature of Fordham Theatre allowed her to work both behind the scenes and onstage. During her junior year, a friend who was directing a show asked her to do costume designs, and she says she “started falling in love with it more and more.”

After graduating in 2007, Covarrubias got an internship in the costume department of the sketch comedy show The Whitest Kids U’ Know. “My very first day on that job, I walked in and I saw a bunch of costume crew members building a giant bear costume, and they were just covered in brown fur and had glue guns and they seemed like they were having the best time,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Oh, you can get paid to do this.’”

Covarrubias spent the next decade-plus designing for critically acclaimed shows like Master of None, Claws, and Ramy. It was in 2020 that her agent told her about an opportunity: a new series starring Gomez, Martin, and Short that would follow their characters as they try to solve a series of murders via their true crime podcast.

“Once I found out who the cast was, I was trying not to freak out,” she says. “But then once I got the call that I was hired, the line producer of season one was like, ‘Oh my God, can you believe we get to work with Steve Martin and Martin Short? This is insane.’ And that was the first time I let myself be like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’” As the lead costume designer of the show, Covarrubias has been nominated for three Emmys, and the characters’ outfits have attracted a fanbase all their own. Gomez’s in particular have inspired fawning coverage from Vogue, Elle, and W—all of which touched on viewers’ longing for her looks—and Defector called the series the “best-dressed show on TV.”

Design Guided by the Search for Connection

Covarrubias’ approach to designing the series is guided by the idea that it’s a show about people trying to find connection, she says, and the original script gave some character traits that influenced costume choices off the bat.

Martin’s character Charles, for instance, makes the same omelet every day, so Covarrubias knew he would find comfort in sameness and would have a limited color palette. Short’s Putnam, on the other hand, is a theater director and a narcissist, and Covarrubias knew his costumes would have to be showier and more colorful.

For Covarrubias, the job as lead costume designer—while it includes everything from creating a season’s mood boards to shopping to being on set to monitor every new costume as it’s introduced—often starts with creating relationships, “knowing how to interact with the producers and the directors and having those creative conversations, and then [building] your relationship with the actors.”

“As a costume designer, you’re often the first person that an actor is meeting when they come to the job,” she says. “You have that responsibility and you represent the show in a lot of ways.”

An Actress’s ‘Dream Project’

In the show’s fourth season, one of those actors was Rebelo, a 2021 Fordham Theatre graduate who played Ana, the daughter in a family that occupies an apartment in the somewhat mysterious western wing of the titular building.

She was drawn to Fordham, like Covarrubias, because of the holistic style of learning she could bring to her acting training.

“I really love learning and I love school, so going somewhere that would allow me to keep learning other things alongside my acting was really important to me,” says Rebelo, who also majored in Latin American and Latino studies. “I find it makes you a better actor, makes you a better person, to be able to know a little bit of everything.”

After graduating during a mid-pandemic lull in acting jobs, Rebelo stayed sharp by doing as many readings, workshops, and auditions as she could while working survival gigs. The New Jersey native had gotten an agent from her senior showcase at Fordham, and in the summer of 2023, landed what she says was her biggest job to date at the time, a role in the West Coast premiere of My Dear Dead Drug Lord—a play from which she had performed a scene as part of her senior showcase.

Back in New York in early 2024, Rebelo got an email from her agency telling her there was an audition for season 4 of Only Murders. After a first reading over Zoom and a subsequent callback, Rebelo got word she landed the part. Filming began less than a month later, beginning what Rebelo calls a “dream project … start to finish.”

“I was acting around legends, literal legends,” she says. “Daphne Rubin-Vega is playing my mother, and I am just hanging out with her in the green room and talking to her. And then every time we were filming, I was sitting across the table from Martin Short and Selena Gomez and Steve Martin. I was just trying to soak it all up.”

Rebelo, who just wrapped up a role in The Irrepressible Magic of the Tropics at INTAR Theatre in Manhattan—where she interned as a Fordham student—says that one of the most memorable experiences of her time on Only Murders came at the very beginning of filming: her first costume fitting with Covarrubias and her team.

“They kept putting me in all these outfits and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is awesome,’” she says. “I felt like the coolest person on earth.”

The award, which is the Navy’s highest civilian honor, was presented to Byrne by Carlos Del Toro, secretary of the Navy, who said of Byrne, “His unwavering support of our nation’s veterans, paired with his belief in participation and his innovative initiatives and leadership, has greatly enhanced our Department of the Navy’s community engagement. His contributions to our military are incalculable.”

Byrne is the vice chairman of Penske Media Corporation, which owns Rolling Stone, Dick Clark Productions, and South by Southwest, among other brands. He also serves on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the Intrepid Museum, the USO, and Citymeals on Wheels.  

“Being recognized by the U.S. Navy is both an incredible honor and a humbling reminder of the importance of service,” Byrne said at the ceremony, which was held at the Penske Media Corporation headquarters. “Supporting our military and veteran communities is something I consider both a duty and a privilege.”

Supporting Fordham Veterans

Byrne was part of the Marine Corps’ Platoon Leaders Class throughout his college years, and after graduating from Fordham, he served on active duty from 1966 to 1969, with a tour in Vietnam in the final two years of his service.

Throughout his career, which includes stints as publisher of Variety and Crain’s New York Business, Byrne has remained dedicated both to Fordham and to efforts to help veterans—in higher education and beyond. In 2012, he founded Veterans Week NYC to honor and support veterans and their families, and in 2017, he established Veterans on Campus NYC, a consortium of New York City colleges and universities—including his alma mater—with students receiving tuition benefits under the GI Bill.

“Gerry is a staunch supporter of Fordham and Fordham veteran and military-connected students,” said Matthew Butler, senior director of military and veterans’ services at the University. Byrne has donated to academic and other initiatives that help the Fordham veteran community thrive at the University and in their post-military careers, and in 2019, he moderated an on-campus conversation with David G. Bellavia, the first living Iraq War veteran to receive the Medal of Honor.

Byrne was inducted into Fordham’s Military Hall of Fame in 2022, at an event that also marked the 175th anniversary of Fordham’s military legacy, which occurs through the ROTC programs and Fordham‘s commitment to serving veterans and their family members with the Yellow Ribbon program. He is also a former member of the Gabelli School of Business advisory council.

“What I learned at Fordham Prep and Fordham College from the Jesuits was ethics and integrity,” he said at the 2022 gathering. “In the Marine Corps, I learned discipline and leadership. When you combine it, it’s amazing what you get out of it.”

In November, Fordham was ranked No. 1 in New York and No. 23 nationwide in the “Best for Vets” rankings published by Military Times.

Featuring Matthew Capodicasa, GSAS ’15

The Glass Cannon Podcast is the flagship show of the Glass Cannon Network, a company that specializes in “actual-play podcasts”—live playthroughs of tabletop role-playing games (a genre that includes, most famously, Dungeons & Dragons). The podcast began in March 2015, when a group of five friends—including Matthew Capodicasa, a 2015 Fordham playwriting MFA graduate—decided to record themselves embarking on a campaign of the Pathfinder series’ Giantslayer Adventure Path. Almost 10 years later, Capodicasa and his fellow founders have expanded the Glass Cannon Network to include more than a dozen other shows covering multiple game systems. The cast members of The Glass Cannon Podcast also frequently put on a Glass Cannon Live! show, drawing fans to venues across the U.S. and Canada to watch Capodicasa and his fellow players go through the ups and downs of the game—and trade comedic banter—in person. They recently closed out their 2024 tour with a sold-out show at City Winery in Philadelphia, and their 2025 tour is set to kick off in February in Austin.

Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car

New York City has one of the most extensive public transportation systems in the world. Yet—from congestion pricing snafus to debates over how much space to allocate to parking—it can often feel like the car is king when it comes to policy decisions. 

In Movement, Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor to its City Journal, and a regular columnist for the New York Post, goes beyond the mid-20th century ideological battles between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs and examines the long history of automobiles dictating the conversation around urban planning in New York.  

“Starting a century ago, the automobile changed the world—and helped drive New York City (and other cities) to the brink of irrevocable urban decline,” Gelinas writes in the book’s introduction, setting the tone for the rest of the book as a battle cry of sorts for renewed investment in public transportation and a rethinking of the city’s streetscape. 

Gelinas brings the conversation squarely into the present, arguing that moving away from car dependency is a key to New York’s long-term recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic toll.   

“It’s time to stop blaming Moses, a man who has been dead for more than four decades,” she writes, “and look to our current generation of leaders to give us the city we need.”

Two of the grads also had solo shows running at New York and Philadelphia galleries this fall.

Teresa Baker, FCLC ’08, whose piece Sunset Turns South was part of “Amarcord,” had her first New York City solo show open at Broadway Gallery in September. “Mapping the Territory” featured her large-scale, asymmetrical paintings, many of which featured the use of natural materials like deerskin and willow branches, in a nod to Native American traditions.

Amie Cunat, FCLC ’08, contributed Sparkler II to the alumni show. An assistant clinical professor in the Fordham visual arts department, she recently had a solo show titled “West McHenry” running at Philly’s Peep Projects, where her colorful abstract work ranged from small acrylic paintings on linen to large mixed-media pieces meant to evoke cross-sections of houses. 

Vincent Stracquadanio, FCRH ’11, an adjunct professor of visual arts, curated the alumni show, which spread out across the Ildiko Butler Gallery, the newly renovated Lipani Gallery, and the Hayden Hartnett Project Space in the Lowenstein Center. 

“A big thread with all the artists in the show is that they came to Fordham and found either a class or a professor here that just kind of swept them away, and it’s this path that they’re still on,” Stracquadanio said. “They left fully changed as an artist because of the teaching at Fordham.”

Today, as the administrator for the parkland along the Bronx portion of the river, Martinez oversees a vibrant collection of green space that offers everything from canoe tours to dolphin sightings.

As a political science major at Fordham, Martinez dreamed of a career in politics. He interviewed with New York City Council member Phil Reed after graduating in 1996, and Reed passed his resume along to Tim Tompkins, who had recently founded Partnerships for Parks—a nonprofit dedicated to connecting the city’s communities with their public parks through volunteering opportunities.

Martinez worked for the organization for 17 years, many of which were spent as an outreach coordinator for Bronx parks that he says were neglected over the years. “It was an opportunity to give people the ability to fight for change in their neighborhood,” he said.

After a period working in the Parks Department’s personnel division, Martinez landed his current job. He manages a staff of city employees and partners with the nonprofit Bronx River Alliance to help restore and protect the river, and to engage the community in activities centered around the water.

“You have this unique feature running through the Bronx that a lot of people don’t think about,” he said. “I see myself in the role of connecting people to the river and helping them navigate the system—showing what they can contribute and how they can also benefit from it.”

And his message for those who haven’t visited the Bronx River?

“Take advantage of this natural resource. And once you do, spread the word and let people know that it’s here and experience all it has to offer.”

A decade ago, Fordham officially became a “changemaker campus.” But the changemaking impulse has been at the heart of a Fordham education for generations. Read more about other Fordham changemakers.

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“I hope that we can continue to make memories and find ways to come together,” she says of the affinity chapter, “because I think Ailey and Fordham have such a special history. It’s an incredible program.”

Where did you grow up and how did you end up in the Ailey/Fordham program?
I grew up in Mesa, Arizona. The summer after my junior year of high school, I actually attended the Ailey Summer Intensive and got to stay in the dorms [at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus] for six weeks. That was a little sneak peek of what college could look like for me. My four years at Fordham were absolutely amazing. I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today without the Ailey/Fordham BFA program. I actually saw the Christmas Spectacular for the first time my freshman year of college through tickets that I got from Fordham.

And did you get to do any workshops with the Rockettes at Ailey?
Yes, they would come in and do workshops at Ailey about two or three times a semester. The spring of my sophomore year, I auditioned for the ensemble in the Christmas Spectacular, and I did that the fall of my junior year. So I was working and going to school and was a part of the show. Then, after I graduated, I auditioned for both the ensemble and the Rockettes. I would’ve been ecstatic either way, but I was offered the role of Rockettes for the Christmas season in 2021, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

So when do rehearsals start for the Christmas Spectacular?
They usually start at the end of September or early October. And we rehearse for about six weeks leading up to opening night, six days a week for about six hours each day. And we slowly layer on choreography, tech, with lighting, costumes, the orchestra, and then it’s opening night and we’re doing it every day up to four times a day. Typically, we do up to 15 or 16 shows in a week.

What are you doing for the rest of the year?
All of us are doing different things, but for me personally, I teach dance and I’m a fitness instructor. I also still do a lot of things with the Rockettes in the offseason. I’ve actually been able to go back to Ailey and teach classes, both at Ailey and at Radio City, where we actually bring the dancers to the music hall and give them that experience of rehearsing there. That has been really special because that’s how I got my introduction to the Rockettes, those workshop classes.

Outside of that, we always keep up with social media and doing different routines and additional performances that pop up last-minute. But then all of a sudden, it’s Christmastime and we’re back at the hall rehearsing and performing for 6,000 people every night. So it goes by quickly. Really, we’re always working and doing things in that time to prepare for the next season.

How do you manage seeing family and friends around the holidays?
I’m so fortunate that my family and friends make their way out here for the holidays. My parents were actually just here for a few performances, and they may come back up for Christmas. But they know that this show is where I’m at during the holiday season, and they’re just so proud of me. And I think that’s what’s special—I can make new memories during the holiday season, and I’m glad that I’m able to make the time to FaceTime and call and send gifts or do whatever it may be to stay connected.

What would your childhood self think about your job?
I think little Maya would be in awe of where I’m at now and would probably not even believe that that’s how I’m spending my Christmas morning. It’s definitely a huge dream come true that I didn’t even know was a dream at the time.

What’s your favorite part of the show?
I really do love our “New York at Christmas” number. We’re on a double-decker tour bus, which takes us through New York City and Central Park and Fifth Avenue, and then you end up at Radio City Music Hall. I love how it incorporates everyone in the show—the singers, the ensemble, the principals. And there’s moments where I’m on the bus and you can really look out into the audience and see individual faces of some of those kids, and their eyes really do light up when they see us come on stage. I feel like it’s one of those numbers that you take it in, like, “Wow, I’m performing at Radio City Music Hall.”

What’s your favorite Christmas song?
“Jingle Bells.”

What’s the best gift you’ve received?
I’m a sentimental person, so just a classic Christmas card from friends or family. I usually keep all of those.

What’s your favorite place in New York City at Christmastime (that’s not Radio City)?
This might be a boring answer, but my apartment. I feel like after the shows and the busyness of the holiday season, I think being at my apartment—which is very much decorated with the holiday spirit and it’s just super cozy—is my favorite place at the end of the long day.

—Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08.

Check out more photos from the Radio City Christmas Spectacular below (all photos courtesy of MSG Entertainment).

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For the Albany native, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a master’s in education administration and policy studies from the University at Albany, returning to his home state is a “dream come true.” He views college athletics as “one of the great human development engines in the world,” and he’s eager to help Fordham’s student-athletes thrive in the classroom, in competition, and beyond.

I know you grew up as an athlete—you played college basketball at Onondaga Community College prior to transferring to Syracuse. How did you become interested the administrative side of college athletics?
Most kids don’t grow up wanting to be a college athletic director. But everyone says that I was probably an athletic director as a kid, because I was always the first one in Little League to be at the field to help the coach rake the field, put the bases out, you name it. Playing pickup basketball, I would go get markers and put our names on the backs of T-shirts. My brother tells the story about me taking his brand-new alarm clock that he got for Christmas and putting it on the table to keep score in the middle of the street when we were playing football.

And then higher education—my mom preached going to college to all five of us. All five of her kids went to college. So, when you’re able to mix the importance of higher education and sports, then you have the career I have, which has been just a tremendous career path.

What appealed to you about the job at Fordham?
I’ve had my eye on Fordham for quite some time. It’s a great institution—an elite academic institution in the heart of New York City, in the Atlantic 10 in most sports. You can’t beat it.

As the interview process started, I talked to [current Akron and former Fordham head football coach] Joe Moorhead. He said, “It’s a special place. We hate to lose you, I love working with you, but it’s my alma mater and I think, for you, it’s home. You’d do really well there.” So that resonated with me.

What are your biggest goals coming into the job?
Well, first of all, I’m going to shift into what I call “start-stop-continue.” I want to hear from the coaches and the staff on what are the things we should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing at Fordham. And from that point, we’ll start to build out a true strategic plan for athletics and a vision for the future.

On that list, the top priority will be fundraising. NIL [name, image, and likeness opportunities for student-athletes] will also be a consideration. And then when you look at the teams, the Atlantic 10 is a basketball conference, so elevating men’s and women’s basketball [while giving] all our other sports [what they need to] achieve their goals.

And then getting football back on track is going to be a priority, as well, because I know that means a lot to the Fordham community. And when they’re winning, I know that people come out. Joe Moorhead reminded me of that—they had to bring in stands on the other side for him when he started getting it rolling.

Organizational efficiency will be another thing to tackle, and then just bridging athletics into the greater Fordham community across campus so that our colleagues are in tune with what we’re doing and what we’re trying to accomplish.

Tell me a little bit more about your philosophy and approach to athletics in higher ed and its relationship to academics.
First and foremost: graduation. I look at sports particularly as a way to keep students engaged in their journey through higher education and [to help them build] the life skills that they will learn by being on the team—being on time, having a set schedule, knowing where you’re supposed to be at the right time, paying attention and being detail-oriented because you need to know the playbook. And when you go into the workforce, these are all life lessons that are going to be critical to our student-athletes.

The Rose Hill Gym turns 100 this year. What are your thoughts about the gym as a home environment?
I think the Rose Hill Gym is amazing. I’ve been in arenas that are brand new, and I’d like to equate it to—do you want to buy a track home or do you want to live in a home that has character and history and tradition? When you go into the Rose Hill Gym, you feel that history and tradition. And I think that [its relatively small] size is actually an advantage. When you have that loud, daunting atmosphere that you have at Rose Hill, you can’t replicate that.

For Fordham fans getting to know you, what are some of your passions and interests outside of sports?
Well, I love to cook and I have a great audience in my [10- and 12-year-old] daughters and my wife. And I’m a big boater, so I’ve got to figure out where to go out and boat and fish.

How are your wife and daughters feeling about the move?
They’re just excited about being in New York. My younger daughter said about a month ago that it’s a shame that she can’t be around her grandparents, because one of her friend’s grandparents came over to babysit her. But now, guess what? My daughter gets to spend the weekend with my mom, my wife’s family, so it’s just working out really well.

You spent time in New York City while working at Columbia as director of marketing, tickets, and promotions in 1999 and 2000. What’s your favorite place in New York City?
My favorite place in New York City has always been Harlem. The rich tradition of Harlem has always been something I’ve been intrigued by. I could walk along those blocks and think about some of the most amazing things that happened in Harlem, going to the Cotton Club, etc.

And I’m looking forward to exploring the Bronx. I’ve spent very little time in the Bronx—just going to a Yankees game, that’s pretty much it. And now I’ll get see the botanical garden, the Bronx Zoo. I never knew anything about Arthur Avenue, and it’s just amazing down there.

You can’t do New York in a minute. You know that. It’s a vast place with so many new things—so many new restaurants, new ideas, always showing up. I haven’t stopped smiling. To come home and live in New York City is like a dream come true.

Interview conducted, edited, and condensed by Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08.