(PRWEB) April 02, 2018 -- Pace University’s Board of Trustees announced the election of three new board members effective immediately. They are: Joseph R. Ficalora (Pace’s Lubin School of Business), president and chief executive officer of New York Community Bancorp, Inc.; Robert Sands (Pace Law School), chief executive officer of Constellation Brands; and Shaun Smith (Pace’s Lubin School of Business and Pace Law School), senior vice president and chief human resources officer for NewYork-Presbyterian. All three are Pace alumni.
“On behalf of the board, I’m thrilled to welcome these new trustees,” said Mark Besca, chairman of the Pace University Board of Trustees. “Each brings a wide range of experiences and perspectives and has demonstrated a commitment and passion to Pace University and the transformative power of higher education. They join at a time of growth and increased opportunity, with more students needing the skills and advancement a Pace education provides.”
About the new board members:
Joseph R. Ficalora, who joined New York Community Bancorp as a teller at the age of 18, was named president and chief executive officer in 1993. He is a member of numerous boards in Queens, including those of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, the Museum of the Moving Image, New York Presbyterian/Queens, the Flushing Cemetery and the New York Hall of Science (where Pace Trustee Ivan Seidenberg is a trustee emeritus). In addition, he serves on the Advisory Council of the Queens Museum of Art. Mr. Ficalora also serves as a director for the New York Bankers Association, the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, Pentegra Services, Inc., the Foreign Policy Association, Pentegra Retirement Trust, Peter B. Cannell & Company, Inc., the New York Community Bank Foundation and the Richmond County Savings Foundation. Mr. Ficalora is also a member of the American Bankers Association’s American Bankers Council and its Government Relations Council Administrative Committee. He is also a Vietnam veteran, having served for three years in the 1960s. His personal foundation, the Ficalora Family Foundation, primarily supports education and cultural initiatives. Ficalora attended Pace’s Lubin School of Business.
“Joseph Ficalora is a classic Pace story,” said Besca. “He started at New York Community Bancorp as an 18-year-old teller. He went to Vietnam, he got a Pace degree, he worked hard, and today he’s the bank’s president and CEO. He and his wife, Alice, are supporters and benefactors serving local communities in New York. We’re pleased he is joining our board to help create opportunities for the next generation of ambitious young people.”
Robert Sands served as president and chief executive officer of Constellation Brands, a company founded by his father in 1945, from 2007 – 2018. He continues to lead the organization as CEO and transitioned his responsibilities as president to the company’s chief operating officer. Constellation Brands is a beer, wine and spirits producer and marketer based in Victor, N.Y. Sands has served on several nonprofit boards in the Rochester area and is an officer of the Sands Family Foundation. Sands attended the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
“Robert Sands earned his J.D. at Pace and became general counsel of his family’s business, Constellation Brands,” said Besca. “Now, he’s Constellation’s CEO, and a prominent community leader in the Rochester area, where he lives with his wife, Pamela. Constellation has thrived under his leadership, and we welcome his business acumen to our board.”
Shaun Smith is the senior vice president and chief human resources officer for NewYork-Presbyterian. He has been with the hospital since March 2012 and in his current position since November 2015. In August 2017, U.S. News & World Report named NewYork-Presbyterian the top hospital in New York for the seventeenth year in a row. Smith attended the Lubin School of Business and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
“Shaun Smith was born in Jamaica and immigrated to the United States at a young age,” said Besca. “He earned both a bachelor’s of business administration and a law degree from Pace, and today he’s senior vice president and chief human resource officer for NewYork-Presbyterian. His expertise in business, in law, and in the health professions will make him an invaluable addition to our board.”
About Pace University: Since 1906, Pace has educated thinking professionals by providing high-quality education for the professions on a firm base of liberal learning amid the advantages of the New York metropolitan area. A private university, Pace has campuses in Lower Manhattan and Westchester County, N.Y., enrolling nearly 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in its Lubin School of Business, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, College of Health Professions, School of Education, Elisabeth Haub School of Law and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. A 2017 study by the Equality of Opportunity Project ranks Pace University first in the nation among four-year private institutions for upward economic mobility based on students who enter college at the bottom fifth of the income distribution and end up in the top fifth. http://www.pace.edu
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Cara Cea, Pace University, +1 914-906-9680, [email protected]
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