When others his age were exploring retirement, Stephen J. Friedman took on a new ”” and unexpected ”” challenge.
“I spent most of my career as a lawyer and in government,” he said. “I was a partner in a large firm.”
He paused. “Then I became a born-again academic,” he said with a laugh.
At age 66, Friedman became the dean of Pace University School of Law in White Plains in what would mark the start of a whole new career path.
“It was interesting because I didn”™t really think of myself as ”˜an education person,”™” he said, though he had worked with legal-education entities and taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School for about 10 years. Still, “I thought this is an area where I thought I could make a contribution,” though he hadn”™t been looking for a new career.
“I loved that job,” he said of his time as dean. He smiled and added, “I thought it was my last job.”
Not quite, as he would find out three years later.
“I basically became president overnight in the summer of 2007 and then I found myself on an even steeper learning curve.”
It was a time of declining enrollment and other challenges at Pace.
“I learned a lot ”” and fast ”” and I made a lot of changes. I changed almost the whole senior management group.”
As the seventh president of the private institution founded in 1906, Friedman, who has homes in Manhattan and Pound Ridge, works out of an 18th-floor office at One Pace Plaza in the heart of the school”™s lower Manhattan complex adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall.
“Pace is engaged in a program of really massive renewal and change and rebirth, but we”™re still rooted in our tradition,” he said.
With campuses in New York City and Westchester County, Pace enrolls nearly 13,000 students in bachelor”™s, master”™s and doctoral programs in its College of Health Professions, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences (which includes Pace School of Performing Arts, launched in 2014), Lubin School of Business, School of Education, School of Law and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.
As president, Friedman oversees it all ”” working with the school”™s board of directors ”” including master plans for both the New York City and Pleasantville campuses.
Throughout, he said, his role is to help students “improve their prospects in life, give them a running start in their careers.”
A PROMOTER FOR PACE
Friedman will easily reel off facts and figures, discussing student population and faculty experience. He points to successes of specific programs, from advances in the physician”™s assistant division to a new performing arts school that works with The Actors Studio.
Pace, for example, was ranked in the top 15 percent for return on investment out of 1,500 colleges by PayScale.com. In 2014, the Pace team won first place at the National College Fed Challenge, an economics competition, ahead of schools including Princeton University and the University of Chicago. In addition, Pace”™s master”™s program in computer information technology was ranked number 9 among “Best Online Graduate Computer Information Technology Programs” by U.S. News & World Report.
A conversation with Friedman also touched on topics ranging from technology and its applications in the classroom to landscaping on the Pleasantville campus to impressive student successes.
“A high percentage of our students get very good jobs,” the Pace president said. “It”™s incredible, exciting and gratifying to make that kind of contribution.”
He also finds rewards in fundraising for the school, which he has been doing more often.
“A lot of my private-sector friends would say ”˜Ew. You”™re going to spend a lot of time fundraising.”™”
Friedman loves it. “I meet so many interesting people,” he said.
FROM BROOKLYN TO BOARD ROOM
Friedman, it seems, had a drive to succeed from his earliest days.
A Brooklyn boy who would go on to receive a bachelor of arts degree magna cum laude in 1959 from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, he earned his J.D. magna cum laude in 1962 from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and winner of the Sears Prize.
The career that followed had him moving between the practice of law and public service.
Friedman came to Pace as a former senior partner and co-chairman of the corporate department of Debevoise & Plimpton. He had variously served as commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission, deputy assistant secretary for capital markets policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, executive vice president and general counsel of the Equitable Cos. Inc. and the E.F. Hutton Group Inc. and as law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. He wrote and lectured often on regulation of the securities markets and financial institutions
Yet his post in academia has proven the most rewarding.
“It”™s a very challenging job, but it”™s the best thing,” he said. “I”™ve done a lot of things, and it”™s really the most exciting, challenging and fun thing I”™ve done.”
He laughed. “Not every moment ”” but it”™s great,” he said.
Editor”™s note: Friedman in January informed the Pace community that he will end his 10-year tenure as president when his current term ends in June 2017.
This is an edited and abridged version of a profile published in the February issue of WAG magazine, sister publication of the Business Journal.
