For Alumnus a St. John’s Degree Opened One Door after Another
For Peter Kontopirakis '83CBA, '88M.B.A., “Ninety percent of success is showing up.” That included night classes, full-time work, little sleep, Wall Street résumé drops, global assignments, and eventually leading internal audit for Mizuho in the Americas as Managing Director and Chief Auditor.
A native of Brooklyn, NY, this is a classic St. John’s story. The son of hardworking parents of modest means, and the first in his family to earn a college degree, he understood his pathway to a degree and, ultimately, to success would be hard-won.
The St. John’s degree opened the door for me.
“I didn’t have a trust fund. I did not have a benefactor. I was going to have to make my own way in the world, and that meant staying home for school, working full-time, studying diligently and repeating the same process each day.”
Even St. John’s, close to home as it was, represented a new world. Mr. Kontopirakis recalled feeling that many classmates seemed more prepared than he was, leaving him to watch, learn, and adapt while balancing school, work, grades, and the normal demands of young adulthood. “Because I was working and going to school, it was always a struggle to keep grades up, go to work and have a life.”
Due to the demands on his time, Mr. Kontopirakis graduated one semester late and did not participate in any on-campus recruiting. “I was a little concerned whether I was going to find a job. I printed my resume and went to Wall Street with 50 copies and the addresses of all these different brokerage firms.”
On foot, he distributed half the resumes on one day and the other half the next. “By the time I got back home on the second day, I had a call to come in for an interview,” he recalled.
“The St. John’s degree opened the door for me.”
Mr. Kontopirakis worked as a broker on a trading desk before entering graduate school, where he again chose St. John’s. “I was a young kid working and taking as many securities industry licensing tests as I could, including the Series 7. I had no frame of reference. It was fantastic, and that’s where everything started for me.”
Opting to pursue his M.B.A., Mr. Kontopirakis wanted “a recognized credential” that would establish him early as a professional in the industry (certified public accountant). Becoming a CPA, he stressed, is his proudest professional accomplishment.
“I went to school at night full-time, and I worked full-time and somehow got through grad school with very little sleep.” This time around, he took full advantage of the recruitment process at St. John’s and found himself fielding offers from large accounting firms before settling on Ernst & Young.
“By that time, I was a bit older, more mature, and I understood the corporate world.”
Actively recruited by headhunters, Mr. Kontopirakis pivoted to Credit Suisse four years later and has since enjoyed a long career, advancing quickly into senior executive roles worldwide.
He remains close to his St. John’s family, especially his brothers in the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and noted there is a wealth of St. John’s alumni at Mizuho.
The University’s Vincentian Mission left a deep impression on him and he remains active in service, volunteering with Holy Cross Brooklyn Outreach Center’s midnight food runs for the homeless and participating in the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, a Greek American cultural, educational, and philanthropic organization.
Mr. Kontopirakis advises students “to be in it. You've got to try. If you work hard, show up, and do what's asked of you, you can be successful. If you don't show up, you'll never know. Showing up and getting in the game is very important. A lot of people never even try. When you try you discover things about yourself you never dreamed possible.”
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A chance meeting outside the St. John’s University Speech and Hearing Center—then located on the Queens, NY, campus—led to a lifetime of happiness for Sharon Weigand ’97SJC, ’99M.A. and John P. Weigand ’97M.A.
The pair were waiting near the office of an instructor who was busy with a call. The delay proved prophetic. They began a conversation to pass the time, and something clicked for both.
For Charles Driest ’07M.B.A., the allure of Italy brought him to St. John’s University. With his father in the US Marine Corps, Mr. Driest developed an early sense of wanderlust, “seeking out new things, new experiences”—and the ability to study abroad during his M.B.A. program played a major role in his decision to attend St. John’s.
“When I first started to look at M.B.A. options, I put a couple of parameters around what I wanted to do,” he said. “I wanted to be at a program in a metropolitan location, and I was very interested in the opportunity to have a study abroad opportunity,” which is something he had not taken advantage of during his undergraduate years at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
For Whitestone, NY, native Dennis Kirincich ’93CBA, “something just clicked” with St. John’s University when he considered colleges.
“So many people in my community went there,” he recalled. “Several of my brother’s friends attended, as did students from my high school. It’s well-known, respected, and has a great reputation for business, which is exactly what I wanted.”