Former Stinger gives back to Concordia with $100,000 for student athletes

For Al Fiumidinisi, being a student athlete wasn’t easy. It carried with it financial pressures other students may not have experienced.

“Student athletes have to pay for living expenses, since so many of them are from outside of Quebec,” says Fiumidinisi, who was a wide receiver for the Concordia Stingers men’s football team in the late 1980s. “It can also be expensive when athletes in sports like football have to eat a lot more than most other students. And then there’s tuition and textbooks, too. It’s tough.”

Fiumidinisi, now a senior investment advisor at CIBC in Montreal, recently made a $100,000 gift to the John Molson School of Business through the Campaign for Concordia: Next-Gen Now. Each year — for the next 10 years — the gift will support one female and one male student athlete with a $5,000 scholarship.

“Concordia was a great and supportive community, and I have nothing but positive things to say about my time. I realized that many students were not as fortunate as I was in terms of finances,” says Fiumidinisi, adding how he believes that sports can be integral to students looking to level up their business acumen.

“Sports can teach you be a strong leader, to work with a team, and if you look around at various CEOs in many industries, you’ll see they often have a sports background,” he says.

Fiumidinisi still keeps up with how the Stingers compete during their seasons, and “if a team is in the playoffs, I’ll be trying to find time to watch how they do,” he adds.

A knack for sports and the outdoors

Fiumidinisi grew up in a town near Churchill, Manitoba, where he often hiked in nearby forests with his siblings and friends. Exercising in the outdoors felt natural for him.

When he moved to Montreal at age 15, he became passionate about playing baseball, soccer, basketball and, primarily, football. “I loved the competitive aspect of sports and how football is really a thinking man’s game,” he recalls.

Fiumidinisi entered Concordia in 1984 as an accounting major but it didn’t feel right for him. “A friend said I should take some finance courses, and I did, and it was a lightbulb moment for me,” he recalls. Earning a degree in finance aligned with what he ended up wanting to do: manage portfolios of high-earning Canadians.

“I was confident about my abilities after Concordia and when I interviewed for Dominion Securities, I knew it was going be great for me,” he says. He spent 19 years at Dominion, which transitioned to RBC, before landing a similar job at CIBC.

Fiumidinisi’s charitable work goes beyond his support at Concordia. Twenty years ago, he set up an endowment fund at Montreal Children’s Hospital. “If you have the money to give back, you should, and I have always thought being charitable is an important thing to do,” he says.