When Sebastian Sicari, BSBA ’75, was in the seventh grade, his teacher gave him a letter informing him he’d scored high enough on a citywide math test to attend a prestigious summer program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I never showed it to my parents,” he says now with a laugh. Growing up in Boston, he was much more interested in playing stickball with friends than in attending summer school. “Who knows? Maybe it would have changed my trajectory,” he says now. “Or maybe I would have hated it, and gone in a completely different direction.”
Eventually, those math skills would come in handy as Sicari embarked on his career, first as a certified public accountant and then as a financial executive in the rapidly expanding technology industry.
Sicari’s family had emigrated from Sicily to Boston when he was just 4 years old, moving into a three-story tenement in a bustling West End neighborhood of immigrants from all over the world. “You had people from the same town in Italy who all lived in the same building,” he says. “But also people from Southeast Asia and Latin America.”
At the same time, growing up in the heart of the city, he was less than a ten-minute stroll from his future alma mater, Suffolk University. Like many immigrants, Sicari’s father was a big proponent of education as a way to better his children’s prospects, and pushed them to attend college. Suffolk’s proximity and affordability made it the perfect option for Sebastian, and he worked summers and part time during the school year to pay his tuition.
Hearing that some friends had gotten good-paying jobs as CPAs, he enrolled in the Sawyer Business School and majored in accounting. His experience at Suffolk was inspiring in broader ways as well, however.
“Being located next to the State House and just down the street from the Financial District proved to be a real awakening for a lot of students with similar backgrounds to mine,” he says. “It was the type of place where we could mature and realize what an education and a professional career could bring. I can honestly say Suffolk provided the catalyst and the opportunity for me to achieve what I have in the business world.”
Eventually, he did attend MIT, completing the Boston Executive Program in Business Management at Sloan School of Management, and went on to senior positions at electronics companies GCA and Apollo Computer. He co-founded the semiconductor equipment company Aseco, serving first as chief financial officer and eventually as CEO. He finished out his career as co-founder and CEO of kSARIA, a fiber optic connectivity manufacturer serving the defense and aerospace industry.
A donor to Suffolk for many years, he and his wife recently established the Sicari Family Scholarship for first-generation students from Massachusetts at the Sawyer Business School to spur more success stories like his own.
“I tried to look at my background and mimic it to some extent,” he says of his focus on first-generation students who are working their way through college. “I think Suffolk still offers exceptional value to students, and I wanted to help out a little bit where I could.”
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Photography by Faith Ninivaggi
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