Regina Pitaro

Doctor of Humane Letters

For decades, Regina Pitaro has been an influential finance professional and a philanthropist committed to changing lives through the power of education.

A managing director of GAMCO Investors, Inc., she’s the author of Deals … Deals … and More Deals, a book on merger arbitrage that has been translated into several languages. She’s a trustee emerita of Futures in Education, which supports Catholic school students and families in Brooklyn and Queens. And she’s a trustee fellow and devoted daughter of Fordham University, where her magnanimous support has helped elevate the University’s business school and created countless opportunities for students whose lives have been changed by her generous spirit. 

A native New Yorker, Pitaro grew up in Queens, one of five children of Nicholas L. Pitaro, who emigrated from Italy as a teenager and became a New York Supreme Court judge, and Anne J. Pitaro, a longtime Catholic school teacher and principal. They helped instill in her an intellectual curiosity and the conviction that she could succeed in any career. After earning a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1976, the same year her mother earned a master’s degree from the University’s Graduate School of Education, Pitaro continued her studies at Loyola University Chicago. At Loyola, she served as a teaching assistant and in 1981 earned a master’s degree in anthropology. She worked as an archaeologist on development projects for a division of the federal government in Atlanta, Georgia, before returning to New York City to earn an a second master’s degree, an M.B.A. in finance from Columbia University.

Pitaro began her Wall Street career in equity research and sales at Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, and in 1984, she joined GAMCO, where she has served as a managing director and the head of institutional marketing. In 2010, Pitaro received the Fordham Founder’s Award, given to individuals whose personal and professional lives reflect the highest aspirations of the University’s defining traditions, as an institution dedicated to wisdom and learning in the service of others. Later that year, she and her husband, Mario Gabelli, a 1965 Fordham graduate and the chairman and CEO of GAMCO Investors, made the first of two historic donations to the University, giving the Gabelli School of Business its name and providing long-term support for academic programs, faculty research, scholarships, teaching excellence, and more. In 2020, they made another gift to the University, one that superseded the 2010 gift as the largest single donation in Fordham’s history.

For her gracious spirit, exceptional generosity, and commitment to ensuring that the gift of a Jesuit education remains a viable option for all families regardless of economic status, we, the President and Trustees of Fordham University, in solemn convocation assembled and in accord with the chartered authority bestowed on us by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, declare Regina Pitaro Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa. That she may enjoy all rights and privileges of this, our highest honor, we have issued these letters patent under our hand and the corporate seal of the University on this, the 20th day of May in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Three.