Fairfield Universty announces four new Trustees | Press Releases

Fairfield University has announced the election of a Jesuit priest and three alumni to the Board of Trustees. They are Rev. James F. Keenan, S.J., president of St. Peter's Prep in Jersey City, N.J.; Stephen M. Lessing, a managing director of Lehman Brothers in New York City; Michael E. McGuinness; president and chief executive officer of The NuGenesis Technologies Corporation in Westborough, Mass; and William P. Weil, managing director of Wagner Stott Mercator LLC, in New York City.

Before being named to St. Peter's Prep in 1994, Father Keenan had served as president of Canisius High School in Buffalo, N.Y., McQuaid Jesuit High School in Rochester, N.Y., and Xavier High School in New York City and as director of the Jesuit Seminary & Mission Bureau in New York City.

He is also a trustee of St. Aloysius Academy in Jersey City and Boys Hope/Girls Hope; chairman of the P.E.A.C.E. Foundation, and a member of the advisory board of the New York Province Jesuit Seminary and Mission Bureau. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Fordham University.

Stephen M. Lessing has been with Lehman Brothers since 1980, where he is a managing director and co-head of Capital Markets. A 1976 graduate of Fairfield University with a bachelor's degree in economics, he earned an MBA from Fordham University in 1979.

Lessing is a member of the boards of the Securities Industry Association, the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and the Dorothy Rodbell Cohen Foundation, and Lessing's Inc. He resides in Oyster Bay, Long Island, with his wife, Sandra, and their four children.

Michael E. McGuinness is the president and chief executive officer of NuGenesis Technologies Corporation in Westborough, Mass. Established in1996, NuGenesis Technologies provides automated systems for the collection, storage, and application of scientific information by unifying data into a common electronic format.

A native of Hartford, Conn., McGuinness graduated from Fairfield University in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in biology. He and his wife Mary (Kelley), also a Fairfield graduate, live with their three children in Southborough, Mass., where he is the director of the Southborough Education Foundation and a youth sports coach for football and lacrosse.

William P. Weil is managing director of Wagner Stott Mercator LLC where he serves on the executive committee. He joined the firm in 1970, following his service in the United States Navy. In 1974 he became a partner and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Since then he has served as a Floor Official and on various committees of the Exchange, including the Allocation Committee and the Exchange Market Information Program. He was a founding board member of the Specialist Association.

A 1968 graduate Fairfield University with a bachelor's degree in economics, Weil is a director of Alpine Aromatics International, Inc., and president and trustee of the Flying Horse Foundation, a family charitable foundation that provides scholarships, tutorial services, and community facilities for needy children in the Plainfield, N.J. area. He and his wife, Nina, reside in Plainfield with their two children.