Award for CNR Legacy
Rosa J. Napoleone CNR SAS '75

 

Throughout her career, Rosa Napoleone has embraced a way of life that seamlessly merges professional excellence with a steadfast emphasis on lifelong friendships, faith and family. As an undergraduate, Rosa fell in love with the College of New Rochelle and cultivated relationships that have followed her long after her graduation 47 years ago.

Napoleone was recruited while still on CNR’s campus by New York Life Insurance and immediately after graduation took a position as a programmer trainee. Within the company’s Information Technology department, she climbed through the ranks and became an integral voice in shaping the department and its multi-layered interface with its clients and stakeholders. In today’s often migratory career world, she maintained a rare 38-year-history at New York Life, culminating with her installation as a vice president in the early 2000s. By the time of her retirement in 2013, Napoleone had overseen and grown alongside an evolving industry molded by technologies she helped implement and support.
 
With a philosophical approach that it is “relationships that drive technology”, Napoleone has continually used the inspiration of her own close connections to friends and family to drive her work. Married in the Holy Family Chapel on campus in 1980, she and her husband George raised their son Michael in Valhalla.
Together they have contributed their volunteering efforts to a myriad of organizations in her community including The Holy Name of Jesus Church, The Valhalla Lions Club and the Hawthorne Troop 1 Boy Scouts, all while nurturing CNR friendships and maintaining active alumni leadership.

Her loyal and continuous alumni involvement evolved throughout the years, beginning with her role as her class president and fund agent and spanning participation as director of the alumni board and president of the Alumni Association. Her passionate devotion to her alma mater rose to meet the intense challenge when CNR faced closure; returning to campus to volunteer for three years on campus alongside Marlene Tutera CNR SAS ’71 in the Office of Alumni Engagement. Through CNR’s ultimate closure, Napoleone helped drive alumni voices in a groundbreaking transition to finding a new home in partnership with Mercy College. Embracing a new chapter beyond loss, Napoleone strongly champions keeping the flame alive through her efforts as co-chair in the newly established CNR Legacy Council and as a leader for her class.

Through IT consulting, working with Marlene KnowledgeConnect, an IT sharing company, Napoleone has sustained a vibrant post-retirement influence on issues facing today’s modern workplace. She has interlaced her expertise, acting as an advisor to a forum of company leaders faced with the complex issues surrounding the end user experience, including those issues that emerged during the pandemic. In retirement, she and her husband enjoy traveling near and far — giving her the chance to enjoy long-cherished places like Cape Cod and Cape May and to experience adventure in places like Alaska and Italy, where both have ancestral roots.  Introducing her adult son to his cousins on one of several trips to Sicily and maintaining multi-generational family connections through technology is a source of pride for Napoleone—tying a constant career theme into a full-circle legacy.