One of the basketball advertising posters that
have appeared on regional rail trains and major metro newspapers.
To celebrate her 20th anniversary as a Fordham graduate, Darlene Luccio Jordan (FCRH ’89) made a slam dunk with a generous gift to the basketball programs.
Jordan, a member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees’ athletics committee, made a $1 million gift to the University campaign. Of the total, $500,000 is designated for the men’s and women’s basketball programs. The other half is designated for the general scholarship fund.
The gift comes as part of Excelsior | Ever Upward | The Campaign for Fordham, which seeks to support scholarships, endowed chairs, new facilities and enhancements to various programs, including athletics, with $500 million in fundraising. To date, the campaign has raised $287 million.
In addition to Jordan, 11 other alumni have followed her lead and contributed to this basketball marketing program. Her generosity has inspired them to match her $500,000 gift to athletics, bringing the total raised to $1 million. The money will allow Fordham to run this campaign for three consecutive years.
Augmented basketball marketing includes a campaign that has placed Fordham advertisements on Metro-North trains, New York radio, the back covers of the Daily News and New York Post and at Yankee Stadium, just to name a few high-profile locations. In addition, the University is pursuing games at public venues that will highlight the program on a national stage. The Izod Center, where the team will play on Dec. 19 against Villanova University, and Madison Square Garden, where the team will play Dayton University on Jan. 13, are two such dates that the University has secured.
Jordan, a native of Boston, majored in political science and minored in economics at Rose Hill. She experienced all that Fordham has to offer a student, by taking courses at the Lincoln Center campus, exploring the arts, sports and cultural institutions of New York City and working on Wall Street.
All the while, she absorbed the Jesuits’ concern for the greater social good, she said. That concern is reflected today in her volunteer and philanthropic pursuits, including her leadership role in University’s capital campaign.
“[This campaign] will change Fordham,” Jordan said. “It will provide more opportunities for students, greater depth of experience for students, and it will also create better infrastructure for students.”
She also sees the campaign creating more prestige for Fordham and attracting more students from across the country and overseas. “Our message about Fordham will reach every high school student,” she said.
After graduating, she obtained a law degree from Suffolk University and worked as a prosecutor, first as an assistant district attorney and then as an assistant attorney general. Today, she lives in Florida, where she is the executive director of the Gerald R. Jordan Foundation—named for her husband, the founder of the investment firm Hellman, Jordan Management Co.
At Fordham, Jordan said, she gained the kind of rich experience that binds the University community together. She expects that the campaign will not only meet its fundraising goals, but exceed them.
“I don’t think that that’s a far-reaching statement, because I know the people involved with the Fordham family,” she said. “We are all committed, we are all dedicated, and we all love Fordham. We have incredible experiences that we cherish from our days at the University, and I think that this is truly a transformational moment for Fordham University.”
