News Releases

Oesterle To Deliver Commencement Address

Steven Oesterle, chair and chief executive officer of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s investment banking firm Giuliani Capital Advisors, will deliver the 2007 Alma College commencement address.

Oesterle, a 1975 graduate of Alma College, also will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during ceremonies for 243 graduation candidates.

Commencement takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 21 in Cappaert Gymnasium in the Hogan Physical Education Center. A baccalaureate service precedes graduation at 10:30 a.m. in Dunning Memorial Chapel.

In addition to his work with Giuliani Capital Advisors, Oesterle is partner and managing director at Giuliani Partners LLC, a management consulting firm, and chief executive officer of Bio-One (TM). Previously he was vice chair of Ernst & Young, where he had responsibility for the corporate finance practice, which included the financial strategy and transaction solutions businesses.

Oesterle has an extensive background in strategic consulting, financing placement and mergers and acquisitions advisory work. He has more than 25 years experience in strategic planning and transactions and has been the advisor to numerous companies with acquisitions, divestitures, financing strategies and other deal structures.

He also has advised clients on more than 100 completed transactions in the automotive, retail, chemicals, industrial products, consumer products and distribution industries.

Oesterle grew up on a farm in Mason. He says the skills he gained at Alma were a key element of his professional success, including “the ability to understand what drives other people, and to put myself in their shoes” and “building relationships and establishing two-way trust.”

He emphasizes the importance that mentors have played in his career accomplishments.

“Throughout my career, I have been blessed with a small number of talented, caring professionals who have taken the time to help me develop leadership skills,” he says.

He met his wife, Michelle Andrews, at Alma. The 1976 music graduate is the children’s choir director at New York City’s Marble Collegiate Church, sings with the Juilliard Choral Union, and has sung professionally at Carnegie Hall and with the New York City Ballet. They have two sons, Matthew and Adam.

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The Alma College Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team has won 11 consecutive regional championships. The competition awards the SIFE teams that are most effective in teaching the principles of market economics through outreach projects in their communities. Last year’s team presented 12 projects, including teaching ethics and entrepreneurship skills to students at a juvenile detention center and launching an entrepreneurship competition for students with business ideas.

 

Graduate Profile

Sara Swanton

Sara Swanton
Graduation: 2009
Major: Integrative Physiology and Health Science

Check her pulse, swab her tongue or test her reflexes. Sara Swanton ’09 graduated from Alma College diagnosed for success.

“I got unique experiences through the performance lab and the anatomy lab that I could not have gotten elsewhere,” she says. “Alma prepared me so well for the program I’m in now. A lot of the classes I’m required to take, I’ve already taken at Alma.”