“Making myself available as a mentor and perhaps a role model to aspiring students was an easy and a quite natural extension of my everyday endeavors.”
“Listening is an underappreciated and uniquely important skill,” said James Demitrieus ’70. Honing his listening skills has brought Demitrieus tremendous business success since he graduated from Adelphi University. When he reflects on his career path from being a Wall Street intern to becoming a global CEO, what he remembers best is the value of truly “tuning in to what people are telling you” and actively paying attention, since, he believes, “listening tells you everything you need to know.”
Making myself available as a mentor and perhaps a role model to aspiring students was an easy and a quite natural extension of my everyday endeavors.
The Fellows Program: Giving Back, Paying Forward
Demitrieus’ desire to share the lessons he’s learned along the way inspired his next big idea: the Adelphi University Leadership Fellows Program. He wanted to connect with current students and offer leadership and career advice to future executives. Partnering with Adelphi’s Office of Advancement and External Relations, Demitrieus helped lay the foundation for the Fellows Program, which launched in Fall 2024. A select group of students, known as Student Leadership Fellows, enjoy opportunities to interact with prominent alumni, or Executive Fellows. This collaboration has already made a lasting impact on the students and alumni involved.
Student Leadership Fellows got the chance to listen to the lessons Demitrieus shared over a meal he cooked for them in his New York City apartment. “I love working with students,” Demitrieus said, and his enthusiasm for listening to their stories is contagious. It is the conversations shared and relationships formed that have allowed the Fellows Program to take shape.
The first in his family to graduate high school, Demitrieus recalls the challenges he faced as he connects with other first-generation students who aspire to their own business success. Bridging what can be a “gap between book smarts and street smarts,” he notices that the students he’s met in the Fellows Program remind him of himself at that age. They are “hardworking and driven,” and he encourages them to learn from any experience life might throw at them.
Meaningful Mentor Relationships
Demitrieus arrived at Adelphi as a transfer student from SUNY Cortland in the late 1960s on a lacrosse scholarship, and soon discovered that teamwork, an entrepreneurial spirit and a game-winning attitude could take him to the highest levels of corporate success. He’s eager to share the credit for his success with mentors he was lucky enough to connect with during his career. Those relationships helped him build effective strategic teams—teams he is also quick to credit for contributing to his success. “Making myself available as a mentor and perhaps a role model to aspiring students was an easy and a quite natural extension of my everyday endeavors,” Demitrieus explained.
Roller Coaster Ride to Success
His career path didn’t exactly follow a straight line and, he said, was more like “sitting in the front seat of a roller coaster.” Demitrieus’ journey was never boring: from working at a Big Five accounting firm, to exploring the oil and gas industry, to heading up commodities trading at a major investment banking firm. He was tapped for management positions in Asia, which he recalls as a “transformational” time in his life—an opportunity he used not only to lead, but also to listen and learn. He worked to restructure the multinational SK Group and, soon after, his management career accelerated in the American high-tech and telecom sector at Ixnet, Frontier Communications and in industrial services engineering, where he served as CEO of Toronto-based Alumna Systems. After serving as president of Sherwood Valves and Harsco, Demitrieus diversified his corporate experience into biometrics and was eventually named CEO at EyeLock. Now, as managing director of Jameson Associates, an investment management and financial advisory firm, he leverages his extensive operating experience—and his listening skills—to provide clients with strategic and funding guidance.
At every turn of his journey, Demitrieus cultivated relationships and focused on “people-driven leadership,” which are the lessons he imparts to business and finance students in Adelphi’s Robert B. Willumstad School of Business. His own experience in college centered on the connections he made as an AU Panther and as a student, and the relationships that sustained him—most importantly, his marriage to high school sweetheart and Adelphi alumna Lynn, MA ’72, and his long friendship with lacrosse teammate Tom “MoTown” Motamed ’71. The Adelphi community grieved the loss of Motamed in April of 2023, and Demitrieus’ latest involvement with Adelphi is a tribute to their unique fellowship.
Demitrieus is a true coach and a mentor to Adelphi students, as he encourages them to think deeply about engaging and collaborating in “people-to-people environments.” “There’s a difference,” he notes, “between someone who’s really smart and someone who’s really effective,” and, often, it’s a willingness to truly listen and learn. His openness to lifelong learning reflects an important goal not only for the newest Adelphi Leadership Fellows, but for everyone: “to go home smarter than you were when you started the day.”