COULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR JOB AS SECRETARY OF THE COLLEGE?
It is my job to see things are handled and projects on campus are getting done in absence of the President. I take care of all the things involving the Board of Trustees, I organize the meetings about ten meetings a year and serve as the staff resource to the Committee of the Board of Trustees. I've been here now for four years. I've been involved in a number of searches at the College, including the one we just completed for the head of development and programs office. When I was first here I was heavily involved in the campus master plan and organizing the construction projects you see now.

PLEASE BRIEFLY DESCRIBE YOUR OWN CAREER PATH.
When I first graduated from Trinity in '63 with a degree in economics, I went directly to Harvard Business School, a path that is no longer available to graduates since business schools now require some type of work-experience. After majoring at Harvard in finance, I then received a commission into the army and worked at the pentagon for two years, mostly doing cost analysis work on U.S. Army and NATO projects. I then went to work at the Banker's Trust Fund where I had worked for three previous summers.

My summer jobs, which ultimately led to a permanent job, were arranged by Career Services. A previous Trinity graduate was working at Bankers Trust and that's how it all started. When I first went to work for the Bankers Trust, banking back in those days had a lot of long, long, training. People were hired and worked their way up the ladder. It was a time of change for commercial banking. In the '60-70's banking was becoming a for-profit business, so there were tremendous opportunities for young people and I was fortunate to have the experience in money-market trading and capitol planning. Changes from traditional bank lending to buying and selling loans and the investment banking industry were beginning to take place so it was a very interesting time to be working. Unfortunately the business I worked for did not manage its success very well and has suffered a number of set-backs over the past 4-5 years.

Up until that time my hobby had been Trinity. I had been very involved with the College as an alumni volunteer; a class agent; on the National Alumni/ae Association; President of the NY City alumni/ae association club; set up the alumni/ae admissions effort in New Jersey and had been on the Board of Fellows. My oldest daughter went to Trinity as a student and graduated in 1992.

I was in an excellent position, having had a career in business, to be able to pursue my interest in higher education. My first job was working for St. Peters College in Jersey City. I was the Assistant to the President and worked there for two years. It was an excellent way to break into higher education. It was a position where you had a seat at the table where important decisions regarding the college were being made and yet you didn't have the responsibility for those decisions. I thoroughly enjoyed my associations with and am still close to the people at St. Peters.

While I was working there, I was a member of the Board of Trustees at Trinity College when President Dobelle was hired. President Dobelle and I got to know one another quite well and he knew of my interest in the College and was basically looking for someone to replace his assistant from California. So, I was recruited to become Assistant to the President, which was a very easy transition for me since I had been on the Board of Trustees.

HOW DID TRINITY PREPARE YOU? DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR CURRENT TRINITY STUDENTS?
I am a strong believer in the liberal arts and believe that analysis and critical thinking are the best base you can have. I emphasize not to focus on what your major is or how many accounting courses you have. Take the best courses, with the best teachers that will stretch your imagination and prepare you the best for coping with the type of situations you encounter later on in life. What you discover is that it's not the content of the course that matters so much. For years, I had an ongoing debate with a faculty member here who used to argue how important course content was. I used to say "Well, yes I remember a few facts from a few courses but I thought that for my own personal development was the most important thing that I did as a student. For instance, being president of a fraternity, being involved in student government, and all those things were more important than a few specific facts I remember from class. I took as many history courses as I could since they were what sparked my interest even though I was majoring in economics.

IS THERE ANY ADVICE YOU HAVE FOR TODAY'S GRADUATES LOOKING INTO A CAREER IN BANKING AND BUSINESS?
What's hard today is that most places, the personnel or recruiting department is split up. It used to be a single personnel office for the entire company and they were responsible for hiring. Now it's done in large companies where there may be fifty different departments, there may be fifty different recruiting programs. So it's really difficult to try to figure out what's what. Many times one department is only hiring a few and another is hiring a few more and that is why the alumni/ae networking at career services is so crucial and is a huge benefit of a school like Trinity. There are Trinity alumni/ae in business who know what students and people in Career Service Office don't know. The people who have volunteered to speak with students are people who are expecting students to call and may not necessarily have a job available, but can provide information regarding what is happening with the business. And so that is the first thing- find out who these people are, get a hold of them and find out what the story is.

Unfortunately in the finance area right now, many of the entry level positions are what are known as 'associate jobs' and are not jobs that lead to careers, they are jobs that are to prepare people for business school. It is a place to go for two years to get the experience needed and so people are hired on that basis. And from what I've seen many companies really work these people hard and so it's not a real great situation. That's the sort of thing where you want to make sure you are getting in on the career ladder and not stuck in a temporary position. There is such a diversity of different kinds of jobs in financial services these days that it is hard to say what is good today will be good in five years. People are moving up the ladder from all sorts of departments. It is a much more open sort of situation today than it ever was, people from every place, operations, computer offices, are moving up. It means tons of opportunities.