Inducted in 2019
Financial Services Executive
Member, Prep Board of Trustees (2010-2017)

As we are reminded by the introduction of an old Fordham catalogue: the purpose of a Jesuit education is not to prepare the student for a particular employment or profession.  Rather (the preface continues), “the Jesuit system of education aims at developing, side by side, the moral and intellectual faculties of the student, and sending forth into the world men of sound judgment, of acute and rounded intellect, and of upright and manly conscience.” 

Of the thousands of young men who have received precisely such training at the Prep since the Jesuits first arrived here at Rose Hill, perhaps none have understood and lived by these timeless tenets of the Society more fully than James Stephen Rowen VII, Class of 1982.
 
James Rowen was born in 1964 in Rockville Center, Long Island, the son of James VI, a Brooklyn Prep grad and corporate lawyer, and Joyce O’Rourke Rowen, a public school teacher and reading specialist.  Jim spent his boyhood in Long Beach, New York, and grew up attending both St. Ignatius Martyr Church and St. Agnes Cathedral, the seat of the Rockville Center Diocese founded by fellow Prep and Hall of Honor inductee, Bishop Walter Kellenberg, Class of 1919.
 
Young Jimmy attended Long Beach Catholic where he was an altar boy at his parish church, a member of the Cub Scouts, and played CYO basketball.  It was also in Long Beach that he would hold his first jobs: early on delivering papers, and later (as one would expect of a born-and-bred seasider) as a lifeguard.
 
In the summer of 1978, James began his long daily trek from the shores of Paumanok to the banks of the River Bronx — freshman football practice began in August; classes would start a few weeks later.  Despite his grueling four-hour roundtrip commute, Rowen loved every aspect of his Shea Hall years.  He put in three seasons on the gridiron and never missed a game or practice, swam with the Aquarams, was an officer of the Gaelic Society, and held a leadership position with the Fordham Prep Chapter of the Key Club.  But most of all, Jim Rowen took to heart the Prep’s academic and spiritual lessons, which, steeped in the ideals of St. Ignatius, would help him calibrate his moral compass.  Graduating in 1982, Rowen would later reflect: “I am more grateful than I can appropriately express for the Fordham Prep experience.”
 
Managing a hardware store and picking up carpentry jobs to help pay his tuition, Jim stayed on at Rose Hill after his Prep graduation, earning his BA from Fordham in 1986, and returning to complete an MBA in 1997.  Rowen’s hard work and commitment to his studies would become the foundation for his future successes.
 
Jim Rowen has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the financial services industry, holding executive positions with Kidder Peabody, NatWest Securities and Deutsche Bank where he served as the bank’s managing director and global head of prime brokerage.  In 2005, Rowen moved on to SAC Capital Advisors in Stamford, Connecticut where he would remain as CFO through 2008, before becoming the COO of the New York-based private investment firm, Renaissance Technologies LLC.
 
Of course, Jim would never credit his formative Prep years with simply having equipped him for his professional life (as fruitful as it has been).  The Prep, he would note instead, prepared him for far greater endeavors — namely, answering the call to live out his faith as a “Man for Others.”
 
Jim Rowen’s continued support of Jesuit and other Catholic institutions and the students who attend them has been nothing short of remarkable.  Rowen has lent his time and talent to St. Peter’s Prep, Xavier High School, Regis High School and the St. Ignatius Loyola School, as well as Kellenberg High School and Molloy College on Long Island. 

And as for alma mater, Jim has served on and chaired Fordham Prep’s Board of Trustees, overseen the renovation of the athletic field, spoken at various school functions, and mentored individuals from every constituency of the Fordham Prep community — from current students to fellow alumni.  He has been a driving force behind the Prep’s Global Education Initiative and is the sponsor of the Great Ignatian Challenge which annually raises nearly five-hundred thousand dollars for local Jesuit high schools, and gathers over fifty tons of food for their surrounding communities.  Moreover, at the time of his Prep Hall of Honor induction,

James Rowen has also served on the Fordham University Board of Trustees.
 
James has shared his life with Diane Deering Rowen.  Married in 1989, they are the parents of three: Kaitlin, James VIII, and Megan.  A former manager at the New York Hilton, Diane has also served as a senior member of the President’s Advisory Committee at Villanova University, from which she graduated in 1986.  Like her husband, Diane is unstinting in her support of the various educational, charitable, and cultural institutions that have served her, her family and her community at large. 

The Rowens make their home on Long Island.
 
As grateful as James Rowen has been to the Prep, so too will the Prep always be grateful to James Rowen for his dedication and support of its mission of “sending forth into the world men of sound judgment, of acute and rounded intellects, and of upright and manly consciences” — a dictum as true in the twentieth century as it has been since Fordham's founding in the nineteenth.

As a token of appreciation for his unwavering support of the Prep, the newly constructed entranceway of Shea Hall was dedicated the Rowen Lobby on November 7, 2021.