Gabelli, McGuinness Cheer on Fordham Rams at Scholarship Dinner

(Bloomberg) -- There were a lot of Rams on Wall Street Monday night, eating Wagyu steak amid maroon crushed-velvet tablecloths and singing the fight song of their alma mater, Fordham University.

Many of these Rams also know their bulls from their bears: Mario Gabelli, chief executive officer of Gamco, and his wife, Regina Pitaro, counted two dozen fellow Fordham alumni working at the firm. Some were graduates of the Gabelli School of Business, named after Gabelli made a $25 million gift, the largest in the school’s history.

Also at Cipriani Wall Street were Carolyn Dolan of Fiera Capital, and Andreas Pafitis of Nomura. Right up front were three close college friends: Stephen McGuinness, an alum of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Twitter; Kevin Meenan, who helped rebuild Keefe Bruyette & Woods after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; and Michael McGonigle, who leads senior debt at Audax Group.

McGuinness, on stage to receive a Fordham Founder’s Award, told of growing up near the university’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, the eldest of five children. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland in the 1950s. McGuinness met his wife in college, at a New Year’s Eve party on the Grand Concourse in 1979; they were engaged before his 1982 graduation.

McGuinness said he’d benefited from the mentoring of many people at Fordham, including those he worked with in the registrar’s office when he was a student. He and others also had some mentoring to do at dinner, after Salvatore Cocchiaro, who graduated in December (and is interning at Bloomberg Philanthropies, controlled by Michael Bloomberg, the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News) announced his plans to one day run for mayor of New York City.

"He’s a Republican," Fordham’s president, Joseph McShane, said on stage. "I told him he’d have to run as an independent or a Democrat."

McGuinness advised haste. "The question is not your party affiliation. The question is, can you start tomorrow?"

Plenty of other students also took the spotlight. One member of the class of 2017, Tyler Tagliaferro, played the bagpipe, while the Fordham Founder’s Scholars joined the Fordham University Choir to sing.

The event raised $2.4 million, with calls at the end of the evening to support the "Faith & Hope" $175 million campaign for financial aid in honor of the school’s 175th anniversary, or dodransbicentennial. About $100 million has been raised, with a boost from Carolyn and Mo Cunniffe, who gave $20 million. Tuition next year will be $49,644.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, Steven Crabill