Bridgeport, Connecticut native Rob Morton ’08, MS’09 spent his formative years on the Fairfield campus, first as a high school student at Fairfield Prep, followed by five years at the University for his BS and MS accounting degrees.
“During my second year at Prep, I took a job in the kitchen of the old Jesuit residence to help pay for my books,” Morton recalled. While there, he befriended former University President Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., who encouraged him to continue his studies at Fairfield University. A generous scholarship helped Morton nail down that decision.
As a sophomore honors student, Morton had a serendipitous encounter with a certain first-year accounting major from Ohio, Shelby Mayor ’09, MS’10, while working on a group project in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business tutoring room. Both went on to earn master’s degrees in accounting, then joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as licensed CPAs. They’ve been together since 2010 and they married in 2015, with former University President Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., giving the blessing at their reception.
Morton’s trajectory in the accounting field and his curiosity in how the world works was ignited when he took economics with Philip Lane, PhD, former associate professor and chair of the Economics Department; both teacher and subject soon had him hooked. “Economics really put me on a path to understanding how the world turns, for good and for ill,” he said, “which aligns with the Jesuit focus on social justice.” The exposure to a breadth of disciplines is important, he added, “because we need to learn to operate in a world where we’ll be constantly challenged. It’s important to have the tools to know how to make difficult decisions that are beyond simple matters of debits and credits.”