Distinguished Speaker Series | Welcoming University of Notre Dame Deans

On Thursday, November 21, the Business, Finance, and Law Academy (BFLA) hosted our second Distinguished Speaker Series of the 2024-2025 academic year! We were deeply honored to welcome esteemed guest speakers Dean G. Marcus Cole of the University of Notre Dame Law School and Dean Martijn Cremers of the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business to Cathedral. Both Deans shared their personal stories of perseverance and trust in God’s long term goals for their lives and emphasized the gift of education. Mr. Doyle, the Director of the Business, Finance, and Law Academy, moderated the guest panel. 

Dean Martijn Cremers 

Prior to joining Notre Dame in 2012, K.J. Martijn Cremers was a faculty member at the Yale School of Management from 2002 to 2012. His research and teaching areas are investment management, corporate finance, corporate governance, corporate law, business ethics, and Catholic social thought. A native of the Netherlands, Cremers earned his master’s degree from the Free University Amsterdam and his Ph.D. from New York University Stern School of Business. Cremers and his wife Liesbeth reside in South Bend, Indiana, and have six children.

Cremers opened up his personal journey with the following idea: “My key message to you is that education is a great gift that opens so many doors for opportunities as it has for me.”

Cremers is from a small village in the Netherlands; it is the same village where his parents were born, raised their family, and never moved away from. Both of his grandfathers were construction workers who took good care of their families but were not given great opportunities. Growing up in a family of three children, Cremers “had a mind interested in everything,” and his father always emphasized the importance of education. 

After earning his undergraduate degree in the Netherlands, Cremers moved to New York City to study at NYU; the move was a wakeup call to the intense work required to keep up with his peers, and he also experienced the lack of satisfaction from working hard only to get results without enjoying the process of learning. 

Later, Cremers married his wife Liesbeth, and continued advancing professionally in academia. While he was working at Yale, the Catholic faith was growing more and more important to their family of five children; finally, Cremers decided that his faith and social life should not be separate worlds, but should be fully integrated, and he eventually moved positions to work at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic university. 

Dean G. Marcus Cole 

G. Marcus Cole is a leading scholar of the empirical law and economics of commerce and finance. He was a faculty member at Stanford Law School from 1997 until he came to Notre Dame in 2019. Dean Cole’s extensive legal and scholarly background includes serving as a national fellow at the Hoover Institution, a fellow at the University of Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics, and a visiting professor at several institutions around the world. He earned his bachelor’s degree in applied economics from Cornell University and his juris doctor from Northwestern University. He lives in South Bend with his wife Angie.

Cole began his personal background with the story of his pocket square. He wears the same pocket square each day in honor of his father, who passed away twenty years ago. Forty years before, his father had folded it for him when he purchased his first suit for his first job. Cole’s father sacrificed a lot for his children to receive a Catholic education. He worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and went to school at night, after working all day, to earn an engineering degree. Once he earned his degree and became an engineer, he began to wear a suit to work, instead of work overalls. Cole shared with students a profound lesson that his father shared with him, which has helped to guide his path: “In life, there are things that you’ve got to do, and there things that you get to do. You’ve got to work, to feed your family—but you get to wear a suit to work, you get to have an education, you get to go to church. Never take for granted the “get to” opportunities that you have.”

The second of five children, Cole grew up in housing projects in the poorest neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Cole shared that his family “was very poor, but very Catholic.” Cole’s older brother, who was smart, well-liked, and athletic, was accepted into the University of Notre Dame—the school of both brothers’ dreams—but Cole was not. Instead, Cole attended Cornell University. In order to pay for school, Cole worked multiple jobs while studying, including as a janitor for the University. He would clean graduate school dorms before class and then again after class. Cole even cleaned the law school bathrooms. Cole had to drop out of school twice because of his low grades, a result of the lack of time he had to pour into his studies as his time was spent working, but deep inside, he felt that God was calling him to be a lawyer. His girlfriend at the time—now his wife, Angie—told him, “I believe you when you say that God wants you to be a lawyer. But he didn’t tell you to do it the easy way.” Angie encouraged Cole to return to Cornell to finish his degree, rather than seeking out a path into law that didn’t require an undergraduate degree.

Cole worked full time for two more years to be able to afford to return to Cornell to finish and graduate. In the end, Cole graduated from Cornell with honors, and went on to study law at Northwestern University, which provided him with the most generous scholarship and aid package. Now, as the Dean of the University of Notre Dame Law School, Cole shared, “I’m the happiest man in the world because I’m at the place I really love, doing the thing that I love.”
 

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Mr. Doyle: "Thinking about education as a path towards discernment… How do you persevere when you’re working towards something without clarity?"

Dean Cremers shared that moving to New York was very difficult. He didn’t know anyone and was surrounded by people much more accomplished than he was. He was willing to work really hard, and began to realize that “things worth having always require some struggle; education is worth struggling for, with, through.”

He also explained, “It’s a great blessing to have discovered what I really love doing. You do need people to support you in that. People who knew me better than I did told me, ‘Martijn, you have a gift for research, for asking questions others aren’t asking, for really drilling down and going the distance.’ I didn't see it in myself, but I got a job as a research assistant to a professor in Amsterdam. Mentors have helped me to see things that I didn’t know I didn’t know.”

Dean Cole emphasized, “I want to make sure that everyone admitted to the Notre Dame Law School is also admitted to Heaven; our goal is to train lawyers in such a way that they’ll be admitted to Heaven.” He explained that “the way to keep your eye on the prize is to recognize that God has a long plan for you, not a short one.” 

Cole reminded the students, “I didn’t get into Notre Dame; now I’m running the place. So when you’re applying to college, recognize that God has a long plan for you. Your work might not pay off with an acceptance letter for your dream school. Education will make you a better person and get you where you want to be eventually. Your two long term goals are to have a meaningful life here and an everlasting life in Heaven.” 

Mr. Doyle: "How do you prepare your students to be a 'force for good' in the world, so that they are able to effectively project that Catholic culture in their work?"

Dean Cremers first clarified that the word ‘catholic’ has two meanings: the Catholic Church that our Lord established, but also ‘universal.’ The Catholic faith helps us apply universal human principles like the intrinsic dignity of every person in practice. 

The Mendoza College of Business’ curriculum integrates humanities and political arts. Cremers emphasized that, through teamwork and cooperation with others, students learn how to share their great gifts with others. They also learn how to be competitive with excellence, and this must be preceded by interior excellence.

Dean Cole shared that “Catholic education is different and makes you special.”

Cole explained the key concepts of Catholic social teaching, which make Notre Dame and Cathedral different from other schools. These concepts include the belief that every person is created in the image and likeness of God, which entitles them to dignity and respect. “How you treat others says more about who you are than who they are,” Cole stressed. In the context of the Church’s teaching on Catholic social doctrine, he also explained that solidarity means that “we are all in this together,” and subsidiary means that we are called to live with personal responsibility in our own environments.

Cole closed the panel session with the following words of wisdom: “The world needs you more than you realize. Most high school students are not getting the kind of value-based education that you’re getting. Because of this education, you’re going to be prepared to lead in the world and to help people. You can look for happiness in a job, in things, in money—but everyone is born with a God-sized hole in their heart, and until you realize that you need God in your life, you will never be happy. But when you have Him, you won’t be able to stop being happy.”
 

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At the end of the event, two seniors, Sephora M. ’25 and Amariah M. ’25, beautifully sang the “Notre Dame, Our Mother,” the alma mater of the University of Notre Dame. Students in the Business, Finance, and Law Academy were invited to introduce themselves to the Deans and ask them questions in an informal meet and greet. President Juliette Picciano gifted the Deans a framed, vintage Cathedral High School pennant—a token of appreciation from CHS to ND!

Our Distinguished Speaker Series provides insights into the virtues necessary to lead a fulfilling professional and personal life. We are deeply grateful to our esteemed guests, Dean Cole and Dean Cremers, for their time, wisdom, and example; to Mr. Doyle, for coordinating and moderating this event; and to Mrs. Gina Fonti, Chair of the Board of Trustees, and her husband Mr. Joseph Fonti, for their friendship and support of Cathedral and for making this event possible through their friendship with the University of Notre Dame. 

This speaker event was featured by the Good Newsroom, the digital news outlet of the Archdiocese of New York; please enjoy watching the video below!