This week’s Project 100+ memory comes James Malfitano.  He was born in Hackensack and raised in Toms River, New Jersey.  His father did high-end retail sales in northern New Jersey and New York City.  Over the years, he moved into management, eventually overseeing 40 Men’s Wearhouse stores in the Northeastern United States.  His mother was a homemaker when James was young, but she later became an administrative assistant at a law firm in Toms River.  James attended public schools and graduated from Toms River High School North in the Spring of 2003.  He enrolled at Rowan University that Fall and graduated in December of 2007 with degrees in elementary education and history.  After graduating, he had a hard time finding a teaching job in his dream location, Toms River.  His student loans were coming due, and he began reconsidering his future.  Because of the influence of his father, he had always imagined that he might go into sales.  So, in 2009, after a year of applying for various teaching positions while doing odd jobs due to the United States being in the middle of the Great Recession, he began working for a financial firm called Summit Financial Resources in Parsippany, New Jersey.  Although he did not have a business background, Summit hired him because they believed he was serious and would do well with their in-house training and felt he had the tenacity and temperament to engage with financial professionals, especially during one of the worst economic periods in recent history.  He was a business development manager for two years, learning about sales as a field and helping set up client meetings for colleagues in the firm.  He then transitioned into advertising sales for America Online (AOL).  He was based first in New York City and then later in Boston.  After a year, he took a position as an account executive at NetProspex in Waltham, Massachusetts.  During this time, he and his wife both went back to college and earned Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees at Endicott College.  They took ten of their 14 classes together.  After four years, he took a similar position at Oracle in Burlington, Massachusetts.  In 2017, he left Oracle and became senior account executive at Rave Mobile Safety in Framingham, Massachusetts.  After two years in Framingham, he relocated to Naples.  After several years, he moved to OnSolve where he was again a senior account executive.  There, he and his team sold physical security solutions to large-scale organizations.  In 2022, he joined his current company, Delinea.  His current title is National Partner Business Manager.  He and Delinea work with many other organizations, all identified with the acronym VAR, meaning Value-Added Reseller.  James and Delinea build partnerships between these other organizations to facilitate the re-sale and implementation of their products.

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My father completed only one semester of college, and my mother did not attend at all.  However, my older brother enrolled at Rowan one year before me.  Both he and I always knew we were going to go to college after high school. This was partially because our parents expected us to do so, but also because we both wanted to go to college which we believed it was essential to the futures that we wanted to build.  I joined my brother during his tour of Rowan before he enrolled.  We both liked the atmosphere, the fact that many students lived on campus and the focus on undergraduate education, especially the small class sizes.  I considered growing up in Toms River to be a kind of ideal childhood, and I got a sense that Rowan would continue much of what I liked about that life.

I applied to Ramapo College and to Rowan University.   I chose Rowan because of the curriculum offered by the College of Education and also to be with my brother.  We didn’t live together and had our own friend groups, but we always made a point of seeing each other. 

I chose to major in history and elementary education at Rowan.  I knew that I wanted to be a teacher from middle school.  In high school, I fell in love with history due to some great teachers, especially Ray Cervino who I took for two years, completing Advanced Placement (AP) United States History I and II.  What made his teaching special was his passion for the subject, which was on display each and every day no matter the time period or subject.  On Fridays, we talked about current events and connected it to the past.  We had great debates.  Even though we as students had different views about these things, he orchestrated things in such a thoughtful and peaceful way that the discussion was always civil and productive.  I wanted to be a teacher just like him, which led me to choose history for my major.

Among the faculty in the Department of History, the most influential professor for me was Lee Bruce Kress.  I took him for several classes, including the US history surveys, the History of World War II, and the History of the Vietnam War.  I loved the content of his classes but even more how he taught. You had to come prepared. He would walk down the aisle and, if you made eye contact with him, you had to be ready to respond.  Because of this, I always made sure to be ready in his classes.  I learned the value of being prepared.  This has been so valuable to me in my sales career where I often think of the slogan, “Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail.”  Because of Dr. Kress, in part, I learned to be on the right side of preparation.

My brothers in the Theta ChI Fraternity, notably Justin McWilliam (’08), Eric Schwarz (’07), and Rick Schmid (’08) and – Alpha Chi Rho member Anthony Vasquez (’08) – were also important to my development at Rowan.  I grew up and matured with them.  College is about many things, but I must say that for me, as a young man, little was more important than learning the value of keeping your word and fulfilling your responsibilities faithfully.

I have an amazing life.  Every day with my wife and two children here in Naples is amazing.  However, the best years of my early life were at Rowan.  They were essential to my development and growth as a person.  If it were not for those years, I would not be the person that I am today.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://www.rowan.edu/ric-edelman-college/departments/history/alumni/