Iona College Announces 2022 Trustees Scholarship Award Gala Honorees
Distinguished Alumni & Community Leaders to be Honored March 31st
New Rochelle, N.Y. – Iona College will honor distinguished alumni and community leaders as part of the College’s annual Trustees Scholarship Award Gala. The event will take place on Thursday, March 31 at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City. The 2022 honorees include business and community leaders who have contributed to the success of Iona College in various ways over the years.
Peter G. Riguardi '83, '16H, chairman and president, New York Region, Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage, Inc., and Karen D. Seitz '84, founder and managing director, Fusion Partners Global, LLC, will be presented with the Iona Legacy Award. The honor is traditionally bestowed upon exceptional individuals in recognition of their lifetime accomplishments. The award is presented as a symbol of what can be achieved in life.
Dr. William and Kathleen Magee, co-founders of Operation Smile, will be recognized with the Blessed Edmund Rice Humanitarian Award. Iona College is proud to partner with Operation Smile, a nonprofit medical organization providing safe and free surgeries for those born with cleft lips and palates around the world, as students gain real-world experience serving others. The award recognizes those who, by their activities and service to others, have reinforced Iona’s identity as a College founded in the tradition of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and American Catholic higher education. It is named after Blessed Edmund Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers.
“On behalf of Iona, I would like to congratulate this year’s honorees and thank them for their dedication to the mission and vision of the College,” said Iona President Seamus Carey, Ph.D. “Through their hard work and dedication, they are an inspiration to students and empower the next generation of leaders that are a part of our campus today.”
Past honorees represent a “who’s who” of prominent and successful leaders, including His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan ’14H, Francis Cardinal Spellman, New York Governor Malcolm Wilson, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, former NY Yankee Mariano Rivera P’15, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and world-renowned Ice Bucket Challenge co-founder Pat Quinn '06.
Proceeds from the Trustees Scholarship Award Gala will support Iona College student scholarships. For more information and to purchase tickets, e-journal ads, and other sponsorship opportunities, visit the scholarship gala site.
HONOREE BIOS
PETER G. RIGUARDI '83, '16H - 2022 LEGACY AWARD RECIPIENT
As Chairman and President of JLL’s New York Tri-state region, Peter Riguardi leads all operations for the firm in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He is responsible for broadening the company’s local platform by developing key client relationships, leading major projects, maintaining senior real estate industry contacts and political relationships, and recruiting new talent. He oversees a team of almost 2,700 professionals in seven offices throughout the tri-state area.
Peter has been a leading New York City broker for more than 38 years, with many of his completed transactions ranking as New York’s largest and most complex. Prior to joining JLL in September 2002, Peter was Vice Chairman and Principal of Colliers ABR Inc., a company that he helped found in 1994. He started his real estate career at GVA Williams in 1983, where he was the youngest senior vice president in the firm’s history. During his extensive career in commercial real estate, he has been actively involved in several of the largest and most noteworthy transactions in the New York Metropolitan area. Peter is consistently ranked by the New York Observer as one of New York’s most influential real estate executives.
Peter holds degrees in marketing and finance from Iona University; he was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree and served on the board of directors for 12 years. He serves on many boards and is an active philanthropist. Peter is also a partner in renowned baseball publication Baseball of America.
KAREN D. SEITZ '84 - 2022 LEGACY AWARD RECIPIENT
Karen Seitz founded Fusion Partners in January 2010, a global advisory and private placement firm, that was associated with BTIG until May 2018 when she formed her own broker dealer, Fusion Partners Global, LLC. The firm raises capital for alternative investment managers globally from a broad range of institutional investors.
Prior to founding Fusion Partners, from 1997 to 2009, Karen was a partner at Goldman Sachs & Co., heading the Pensions, Endowments and Foundations Group for North America, serving as a liaison between the largest institutional clients of the firm and the various divisions of Goldman Sachs. In the mid-1990s, she was a Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Morgan Stanley & Co. Before joining Wall Street, from 1986 to 1995, Karen worked for GE Company and GE Capital in strategic marketing and sales positions.
Karen earned a BS degree from Iona University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She also serves on the Iona University Board of Trustees.
DR. BILL MAGEE - 2022 BLESSED EDMUND RICE HUMANITARIAN AWARD RECIPIENT
William (Bill) P. Magee Jr., D.D.S., M.D., is a plastic and craniofacial surgeon who founded Operation Smile in 1982 with his wife, Kathleen S. Magee, and serves as the organization’s CEO. Dr. Magee has trained and mentored thousands of physicians worldwide.
Dr. Magee received a D.D.S. from the University of Maryland, M.D. from George Washington University Medical School, served his general surgery residency at the University of Virginia Medical School, and received the Fulbright-Hays Scholarship Grant to study in Paris with Dr. Paul Tessier in 1975. He then received his plastic surgery training at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia.
He entered into Plastic Surgery Specialists, Inc. in Norfolk in 1978 and became president of the group, which at the time was the largest private training program in the United States. In 2016, he stepped away from the practice to invest all his effort and energy into Operation Smile.
KATHY MAGEE - 2022 BLESSED EDMUND RICE HUMANITARIAN AWARD RECIPIENT
Kathy Magee founded Operation Smile in 1982 with her husband, Dr. William (Bill) P. Magee Jr., and currently serves as its President on a full-time, volunteer basis. Kathy is also a lifetime member of the Board of Directors, overseeing funding and long-held organizational relationships. Kathy shapes future strategy and leads project design within medical mission programming and the education, training, and student departments.
Kathy travels overseas extensively to expand in-country boards while cultivating key corporate, diplomatic, government and medical partnerships that enable Operation Smile to carry out its mission. Kathy is deeply involved in Operation Smile Student Programs, which provides opportunities for students to volunteer, engage and support Operation Smile’s work by raising funds and awareness. She leads the International Student Leadership Conference that annually brings together more than 600 selected leaders from 35 countries.
As a New Jersey native, Kathy received her B.S.N. from Misericordia University in Pennsylvania, her M.Ed. from the University of Maryland, and her M.S.W. from Norfolk State University in Virginia. She also completed graduate work at the University of Virginia and the Jung Institute in Switzerland. She is a mother of five and grandmother to 14, all of whom participate in Operation Smile to promote service for the next generation.
ABOUT IONA
Founded in 1940, Iona University is a master's-granting private, Catholic, coeducational institution of learning in the tradition of the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers. Iona's 45-acre New Rochelle campus and 28-acre Bronxville campus are just 20 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. With a total enrollment of nearly 4,000 students and an alumni base of more than 50,000 around the world, Iona is a diverse community of learners and scholars dedicated to academic excellence and the values of justice, peace and service. Iona is highly accredited, offering undergraduate degrees in liberal arts, science and business administration, as well as Master of Arts, Master of Science and Master of Business Administration degrees and numerous advanced certificate programs. Iona students enjoy small class sizes, engaged professors and a wide array of academic programs across the School of Arts & Science; LaPenta School of Business; NewYork-Presbyterian Iona School of Health Sciences; and Hynes Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Iona is widely recognized in prestigious rankings, including The Princeton Review’s 2024 national list of “The Best 389 Colleges” and The Wall Street Journal/College Pulse’s “2024 Best Colleges in America,” which ranked Iona at #66 in the nation overall and #8 in the nation among Catholic schools. Iona’s LaPenta School of Business is also accredited by AACSB International, a recognition awarded to just six percent of business schools worldwide. In addition, The Princeton Review recognized Iona’s on-campus MBA program as a “Best Business School for 2023.” Iona also offers a fully online MBA program for even greater flexibility. In July 2021, Iona announced the establishment of the NewYork-Presbyterian Iona School of Health Sciences, which is now principally located on Iona’s Bronxville campus in collaboration with NewYork-Presbyterian. Connecting to its Irish heritage, the University also recently announced it is expanding abroad with a new campus in County Mayo, Ireland. A school on the rise, Iona officially changed its status from College to University on July 1, 2022, reflecting the growth of its academic programs and the prestige of an Iona education.