59°
“I m humbled that I was selected,” Prisco said. “It’s a wonderful honor to be receiving this, especially from the Lodi and Hackensack Boys and Girls Club. They care so much and are committed to young people."If anyone was to acknowledge me, I am happy it is them.”
This annual Gala for Great Futures event, from 6 to 11 p.m., honors outstanding community leaders.Tickets are $150 and benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs.
Prisco grew up in Brooklyn. Her father, Luigi, immigrated from Italy and her mother, Grace’s, parents were from Sicily. Both met after World War II.Neither had completed high school. "I was the first one in my family to go to college, the first female amongst all my cousins to really go away to college,” Prisco said.
“I had always wanted to be a teacher,” she said. “I loved education, loved being a student. I joke that I never left school.”
Prisco graduated from the University of Arizona and went to work in the financial aid office at Fordham University in the Bronx, where she learned about the administration side of education.
She later took a job as a teacher on the faculty level at St. John’s University in Queens, first as an adjunct, then tenure track, then requested to go back to adjunct status. This way, she said, she could raise her two sons, Zachary and Louis, whom she had within 18 months -- and at the same time complete her PHD at Columbia University.
Prisco's career took her to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she served as vice president before taking the presidency at Felician four years ago.
“Life takes tuns and twists,” Prisco said. “I never said I wanted to be president, but here I am.”
TICKETS: (973) 473-7410, ext.113 or joe.licata@bgcoflodi.org
Click here to follow Daily Voice Rutherford and receive free news updates.
