Our Board

Servant leaders devoted to the mission.

Our Board of Directors, servant leaders devoted to the mission of Seton, provide strategic guidance and oversight to our work. Whether leading a collection of family businesses, a local non-profit or foundation, a financial firm, or a consultancy, each of these civic leaders brings unique expertise essential to guiding our growth and overall direction. We are deeply grateful for their time and wisdom.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Carlos de Quesada is the founder of VeraCruz Advisory, LLC, which focuses on providing financial advisory and strategic consulting services to non-profit institutions. Prior to founding VeraCruz in 2011, Carlos spent four years as a managing director for a financial advisory and business practice consulting firm that focused on not-for-profit and faith-based entities. He led the origination, structuring, and closing of more than $500 million in financing and interest rate derivatives for not-for-profit clients across seven states. Before focusing on not-for-profits, Carlos served as a vice president and minority shareholder at the fastest growing Hispanic-owned company in the U.S., Liberty Power. He has also held positions with international banking institutions including Citigroup, Calyon (of France), and UBS (of Switzerland). He has served or is active in volunteer activities with the not-for-profit Advisory Board and Steering Committee for the World Fund, as well as the Stewardship and Development Committee of St. Francis College. He also collaborates with the American Bible Society’s Hispanic outreach initiatives through the Latino Advisory Council advising the ABS President. From December 2011-14, Carlos served on the Catholic Charities Board of Venice, Florida. He received a B.S. in finance from Florida State University in 1987 before serving as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1988-91. In 1993, he earned an M.B.A. from George Washington University. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Carlos is a first-generation American of Cuban parents and is bilingual.

Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr. served as Global Chief Executive Officer of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited from 2002 until his retirement in 2009. Sam began his 36-year career with PricewatershouseCoopers (then Coopers & Lybrand) in 1973 and was named partner in 1979. From 1979 to 2002, he held various regional leadership positions with PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor firm). After his retirement from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sam joined Citigroup, where he served as Vice Chairman of the Global Corporate and Investment Bank from 2011 until 2014. Since 2010, Sam has served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mayo Clinic and served as a Director of DIRECTV from 2010 until the company was acquired by AT&T Inc. in July 2015. Sam is a Director of AT&T, Inc., ProAssurance Corporation, and Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. He also serves as a Trustee of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Inner City Scholarship Fund, the National September 11th Memorial and Museum, and the Partnership for Inner City Education in New York City. He received a B.S. in accounting from the University of Alabama and earned an M.S. in tax accounting from the University of Houston.

Scott W. Hamilton is a social entrepreneur now focused on using all that has been learned about the brain in neuroscience to improve children’s learning. Before co-founding Seton Education Partners, Scott designed and for five years led the effort to grow the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) from two schools in 2000 to over 250 of the best known and celebrated inner-city public schools in America today. He guided the investment of over $100M from the Fishers, the founders of Gap, Inc., into KIPP and into the quadrupling of the Teach for America teaching corps, the creation the Charter School Growth Fund, and more. He has held posts in the White House, with the U.S. Secretary of Education, and as the Associate Commissioner of Education for Massachusetts, leading the Bay State’s pioneering investment of $325M in start-up public charter schools. Scott received his degree in Ancient Greek from the University of Pennsylvania, where he rowed heavyweight crew. He lives in London, with his wife, Stacey Boyd, and their two daughters.

Leo Linbeck III is a husband, father of five, and president and CEO of Aquinas Companies, LLC, the parent company of three values-driven enterprises: construction management, real estate development and acquisition, and a life science technology studio. Since Leo joined the leadership team at the company, its annual revenues have grown from $40 million to over $400 million. Aquinas’ unusual structure and business practices have inspired tremendous employee loyalty, with an average tenure among senior managers of more than twenty years, and have made a significant community impact through an annual tithe of its net income. In addition, Leo teaches at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business as a Lecturer, where he was named M.B.A. Class of 1979 Lecturer for 2008-09. Leo is very involved with PreK-12 education reform, especially the expansion of high-performing charter schools serving underserved communities. He has a close working relationship with KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) in Houston, where he led the effort to formulate a bold plan for growth. He also helped create REEP (Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program), a business-school-based program for developing school leaders, and currently serves as the Chairman of REEP. Leo serves on the board of Families Empowered, Competitive Governance Institute, Chantal Cookware, Free Enterprise Institute, and the Greater Houston Community Foundation. He is a Distinguished Alumni of the University of Texas Civil Engineering Department, and a member of the Positive Coaching Alliance National Advisory Board. He also founded and ran the largest non-partisan SuperPAC, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, during the 2012 election cycle.

James (Jim) N. Perry, Jr. is a co-founder and senior advisor of Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm based in Chicago. Jim and his wife, Molly, are philanthropists who support Catholic education, entrepreneurial approaches to assisting the poor and vulnerable, and efforts to promote Catholic culture, evangelization, and the Catholic intellectual tradition in the public square. Jim chairs the board of Empower Illinois, which in 2017 helped pass a landmark tuition tax credit policy that has generated more than $100 million in donations toward scholarships for students from low-income families to attend private schools of their choice. Jim is the lead investor in Sunshine Enterprises, which has provided instruction and coaching to hundreds of inner-city entrepreneurs. He and Molly also provide major financial support for Madonna Campus, a domestic violence shelter in Wrigleyville run by Catholic Charities of Chicago. Jim and Molly also chair the capital campaign for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). Jim previously co-chaired the Archdiocese of Chicago’s capital campaign for education that raised commitments of more than $400 million. Jim is a member of the Board of Advisors for the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters and is a member of the University of Chicago Booth School’s Private Equity Council at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He sits on the board of Bishop Barron’s WordOnFire digital media evangelization enterprise, as well as on the boards of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, the Lumen Christi Institute, the Lab for Economic Opportunity at the University of Notre Dame, and the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Foundation Board. Jim is a 1982 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and he received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 1985.

Daniel S. Peters is president of the Lovett & Ruth Peters Foundation in Cincinnati, Ohio. The foundation focuses on improving the quality of K-12 education nationwide. Dan previously spent seventeen years at Procter & Gamble where he held a variety of executive positions in advertising, purchasing, and research and development. Dan is the former chairman of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of grantmakers in Washington, D.C., and co-founder of the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based organization advocating common-sense reform of the non-profit sector. He currently serves on the boards of Seton Education Partners and Hillsdale College. Dan is a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he majored in history. He has an MBA from Xavier University. Following college, he served with a jet squadron in the US Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea and participated in the evacuation of Saigon. He and his wife, Kellie, have two children.

Maria Beatriz (Mabe) Rodriguez is president/executive director of CISE (Catholic Inner-City Schools Education), a nonprofit dedicated to supporting ten inner-city Catholic schools and more than 2500 scholars in Cincinnati. She retired from the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) after a very successful twenty-five-year career in general management, marketing, international business, and as a P&G loaned executive to Cincinnati Museum Center and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. In her career at P&G, Mabe held a variety of key positions in many countries in Latin America and in the U.S. She has spoken at national and international conferences across North and South America, as well as in Spain, and has also taught at universities in Venezuela and the United States. Her nonprofit leadership dates back to 2004, when she served on the Board of Directors for the United Way in Colombia, eventually rising to Vice President in 2007 and President in 2009. She has served on many boards, including the Board of Junior Achievement Colombia, the Colombia and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Colombia Government Investment Agency, Colombia Industry & Trade Association, Colombia Food Bank, the Board of Directors of the Catholic Inner-City Schools Education (CISE), and the Board of Advisors for La Alqueria, in Bogota, Colombia. She currently serves on the Communications Advisory Board of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, the Board of Cincinnati Museum Center, and the Board of the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Mabe now proudly calls Cincinnati her home, where she resides with her husband, Vince Steigerwald, and her daughter, Beatriz Elena, who is currently attending Xavier University.

Stephanie Saroki de García is co-founder and managing director of Seton Education Partners. She helped launch Seton in 2009 to expand opportunities for parents in underserved communities to choose an academically excellent, character rich, and—for those who seek it—vibrantly Catholic education for their children. Scholars in Seton’s schools are achieving academic growth results in mathematics and reading that match or beat the nation’s most acclaimed urban charter schools. Most recently, Stephanie launched and for over five years directed the Philanthropy Roundtable’s K-12 education programs, where she spearheaded a series of conferences, strategy sessions, and publications on breakthroughs in education philanthropy. She co-wrote Saving America’s Urban Catholic Schools: A Guide for Donors and also served on the strategic planning committee for the Archdiocese of New York’s school system, chairing the committee on school leadership. Previously, Stephanie was a Teach for America corps member in Oakland, California, where she taught high school English. She attended Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a dean’s fellow. While completing her master’s degree in public policy at the Kennedy School, Stephanie worked at the Office of Management and Budget. She received a bachelor of arts degree in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. Stephanie lives with her husband in San Diego, where she is a proud mom to two children.

Board of Advisors

Seton receives guidance on strategy and implementation from the members of its advisory board. This generous board includes: