A Chance Meeting, a Shared Calling
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.
We disconnect from people when we can’t communicate. The work we do can change people’s lives daily.
“I remember thinking how handsome he was,” Sharon recalled. “We started chatting and connected immediately, developing a strong friendship from that point on. Looking back, that chance meeting outside the office was truly the start of everything for us.”
Sharon built a career in speech pathology, while John entered audiology; both eventually found success in their respective fields. They credit St. John’s not only with bringing them together, but also with offering programs that provided excellent preparation for competitive fields.
Sharon stated, “I am especially grateful for St. John’s University because when I applied for graduate school in speech pathology, I only applied to St. John’s. I am thankful to all the professors involved in accepting me into their program; otherwise, the trajectory of my life would have been very different.”
Today, John is the founder and director of Liberty Hearing Centers in Brooklyn, NY, and Chief Audiologist at Downstate Health Sciences University. Sharon is a speech pathologist and former clinical supervisor at Birch Family Services, which operates several locations throughout New York City.
Originally, John declined his acceptance to St. John’s and planned to pursue graduate studies at Queens College. When that program was canceled, he suddenly found himself “academically homeless.” A professor at Queens prevailed upon St. John’s to take him into its program.
“Life takes you in unexpected directions, and then you find your career and your beautiful wife, and you get a great family out of it.” “I’m proud to report that Sharon and I have been married for over 24 years.”
“The plans make themselves sometimes,” he added. “I had a great experience at St. John’s. And, of course, besides meeting Sharon and having a family, I developed many strong relationships that have guided me in my career. I’m preparing students from St. John’s, so it’s like I’ve come full circle.”
John had high praise for the students he encounters from St. John’s. “They are some of the strongest in our profession,” he said. “They become leaders. As much as I give them in teaching, they give me back in clinical participation. Through our work with patients, we make sure we can serve those in our community suffering from disconnection due to hearing loss.”
Shortly after graduation, Sharon was offered a speech-language pathologist position at Birch Family Services, which she held for two years before accepting a supervisory position at another site in Brooklyn. “I spent more than 10 years as a clinical supervisor of the speech department,” she said. “During that time, I developed strong leadership skills and went on to earn my school administration and supervision certificate.”
Eventually, Sharon switched to a part-time role at Birch to raise their two children, but she still maintains a position there. “I feel blessed to have the best of both worlds, as a mother and a professional.”
Sharon specializes in working with preschool-age children with autism and developmental disabilities, a path she finds extremely rewarding. “The majority of my students have significant communication challenges. I take great pride in supporting them as they unlock their voices through multimodal communication to express themselves and develop their receptive language skills. I provide parent training sessions to empower families with strategies to support their children’s social, emotional, sensory, and communication needs and to advocate for appropriate services. I truly feel that I have found my calling, and I approach my work with genuine love, passion, and sincerity.”
John added, “For every hour that she spends in that school, she’s doing an hour to two hours at home preparing and making things more perfect—and that’s something no one sees but me.”
“We disconnect from people when we can’t communicate. The work we do can change people’s lives daily.”
More Stories Like This
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.
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.”