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Stephen and Laura Cunningham |
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Tom Cerio and Donna Arnold |
Alumni Couples Chair Annual Fund Drives
Alumni Fund
Stephen and Laura Cunningham have family roots that grow deep in URI soil. And even though they have traveled far and wide, the tug of those roots keeps them connected to the place where they were once nourished.
Steve is a managing director of Morgan Stanley and head of its Latin American investment-banking group. Laura runs Ramsdell Cunningham & Co., an interior design business. Despite their busy schedules the Greenwich, Conn., couple volunteered to chair the University’s Alumni Fund this year.
Laura met Steve when his family moved next door to hers in Cranston when they were teen-agers. Both came to URI where he studied economics and she focused on art history. Steve was president of the Student Senate and Laura was communications chair.
After leaving URI in 1976, Steve graduated from Columbia University’s Business School. When he went to work for Continental Bank, the couple lived in San Paulo, Brazil for three years. He was recruited by Bear Stearns to build a Latin American investment banking business. He left that position to accept a position at Morgan Stanley.
Laura applied her art history lessons to her business. “It’s a great background for interior design,” she says.
Asked why the two are such staunch supporters of URI, Laura replies: “We want to do our share. We had a great experience there. It’s important to support the University and the best way to support it is to give financially.”
Steve agrees: “It’s natural to want to give back to theinstitution that gave so much to us. Those were our critical and informative years, it was an important time of our lives.”
Parents Fund
Once again Tom Cerio and Donna Arnold have stepped forward to support their alma mater. The couple were the chairs of the 2004 Winter Gala, and now they have agreed to chair the 2005-2006 Parents Fund.
In September Arnold and Cerio, who met as URI students, returned to the Kingston Campus to drop of their son Dominick for his freshmen year of college. “As 1976 graduates of the University of Rhode Island, we couldn’t help but feel proud,” they commented. “Although we have both returned to campus countless times over the years as a result of our volunteer commitments to the University, we are still astounded by the transformation of the Kingston Campus in recent years.”
Tom Cerio is the executive vice president of program distribution at HBO, while Donna Arnold, who also earned her M.B.A. at URI in 1978, enjoyed a fast track career in New York City’s banking world before retiring to raise their two sons.
In 2003 Arnold and Cerio moved back to Connecticut from the West Coast where Cerio was a senior vice president for Buena Vista, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. Since then, both have been enthusiastic volunteers for URI, and that enthusiasm has been deepened by their new role as URI parents.
“Participation from parents is essential,” they say. “Gifts to the Parents Fund support a wide variety of enrichment programs that are essential to a high-quality academic experience.”
For this couple, URI truly represents family, and they are convinced that they can encourage other parents to become as involved with the University as they are themselves.
Photos by Nora Lewis
