Andrew Siaba

When considering colleges during his senior year in high school, Andrew Siaba looked mostly in Rhode Island because he wanted to stay close to his Natick, Massachusetts family. He knew he wanted to find a program in financial management but on top of his list of considerations was to find his “home away from home.”

Siaba attended all the accepted student days at the different institutions but when everyone suddenly erupted in laughter in Ochre Court during his memorable visit to Salve, he knew he had found someplace special. Because he had a high school basketball game later that day, Siaba remembers wearing his letterman jacket to Salve and hanging it on the back of his chair.

Confused by the sudden outburst, it took Siaba a few moments to discover its cause. Brian Shanley, special assistant to the dean of admissions, had sneaked behind Siaba, grabbed the jacket and started parading around the room while wearing it as though he were an athletic star. Shanley even gave a presentation to the accepted students while wearing it, much to everyone’s delight.

“To many, something as simple as this might not be a big deal,” Siaba told the Class of 2019 during his valedictory address on Commencement weekend. “But to me, it meant everything in the world. In that moment I thought to myself, ‘this is a family, and this is where I want to be.’”

To say Siaba hit the ground running the moment he began his freshman year at Salve would be an understatement. A member of the Pell Honors Program and the Nuala Pell Leadership Program, he served as chief financial officer for the Campus Activities Board, played rugby – competing on the team that went to nationals in Georgia during his junior year, performed (trumpet and piano) in Salve’s jazz band, and studied abroad in Salzburg and Vienna as part of a program led by Peter Davis, senior lecturer and chairman of the Department of Music, Theatre and Dance. During his senior year, Siaba interned with the U.S. Secret Service in Providence, where he was assigned to counterfeit money and financial fraud cases.

Even with his busy schedule, Siaba excelled academically, rising to the top of the class and earning acceptance into Salve’s five-year MBA program, which he intends to complete next year along with a certificate in cybersecurity -- all while working as an advisor representative with Fidelity Investments in Smithfield, a job he started eight days after Commencement.

“I considered myself a leader right when I got on campus,” Siaba said. “But with all the activities I was able to become involved in here, I saw my leadership skills skyrocket. I really attribute that to Salve.”

He is a member of Delta Epsilon Sigma national scholastic honor society for universities with a Catholic tradition, IAHS honor society for achievement in accounting, Sigma Beta Delta national honor society of business students, and he received the Financial Management Award from the Department of Business Studies and Economics.

He is most proud, however, to have shared Salve’s sense of family with new and prospective students by serving as an Orientation leader and First Year Transitions peer mentor.

“When I talked to new students, the first thing I told them was to get involved right when you get on campus,” he said. “Go to Club Rush and sign up for everything and take advantage of all the University has to offer. You might not like everything, but guaranteed you’ll find something.

“The people of the Salve Regina community have been the most inviting and welcoming people I have ever met,” he said. “You cannot find a better community at any other university.”