Cardinal appoints four to the Catholic Community Fund board of trustees

BRAINTREE -- Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley has announced the appointment of four new Trustees to the board of the Catholic Community Fund.

The Catholic Community Fund (CCF) enables individuals, families, and others to create permanent charitable funds that help Catholic parishes, Catholic schools, Catholic social services, and other Catholic faith ministries meet long-term and future needs. In doing so, it is fulfilling its primary mission to strengthen and preserve the Catholic faith in the 144 communities in eastern Massachusetts that make up the Archdiocese of Boston.

"I am grateful for the willingness of these individuals to serve in this important role on behalf of the Archdiocese and its many ministries," Cardinal O'Malley said. "The Catholic Community Fund's continued growth will benefit from their wisdom, experience, insight and guidance."

Bishop Robert P. Deeley, who is Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia and a Trustee of the Catholic Community Fund, said, "Each of these new Trustees contributes wide-ranging experiences and well-developed skill sets they can bring to bear on enriching and strengthening the Catholic Community Fund for the good of the people we serve. We are happy to have them on board."

The newly appointed Trustees of the Catholic Community Fund are:

-- Sheila C. Cavanaugh, a corporate communications professional. Cavanaugh was senior vice president of community relations at Fidelity Investments from 1996-2012, where she was responsible for managing Fidelity's internal communications and community relations functions. Before joining Fidelity, Sheila was a global strategies consultant with Coopers and Lybrand. She was previously a banker in project finance at The Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, The Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, and the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich. She also developed and ran the credit training program at the Investment Bank of Latvia in the former Soviet Union.

Following her career in banking, Cavanaugh took a sabbatical year to teach English with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at a Vietnamese Refugee Camp in Southeast Asia. She returned to pursue a graduate degree at Yale University, and subsequently spent two years at Harvard Business School publishing research on issues of competition and strategy for use in Harvard's executive education and MBA programs. From Harvard, Ms. Cavanaugh became a Soros Foundation Fellow and moved to the Baltic States to start one of the first credit training programs in banking after the fall of communism.

Cavanaugh earned an MBA from the Yale University School of Management and is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross. A native of Worcester, Cavanaugh is a graduate of Worcester's St. Peter-Marian High School.

Today, Ms. Cavanaugh lives in Belmont with her husband, Albert F. Choy, a lawyer. They are parents to three children from South Korea and active participants in their parish, St. Joseph, Belmont.

-- Father Richard M. Erikson, the sixth pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Parish, Sudbury. He has been a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston since his ordination in 1985. Since then, Father Erikson has followed the Lord's call in a variety of settings and ministries. He has served as a parochial vicar at St. Mary's in Lynn (1985-1988), professor and chair of Social Sciences at St. John's Seminary, Brighton (1992-1999), as an active duty U.S. Air Force chaplain (1999-2006), and as the Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia of the Archdiocese of Boston (2006-2011).

Father Erikson is a Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force, serving as Mobilization Assistant to the Air Force Chief of Chaplains at the Pentagon. In this role, he is principal adviser to the Chief of Chaplains for training, readiness and sourcing the Air Force Reserve Chaplain Corps. He assists in developing the Chaplain Corps Strategic Plan, total force policy and strategic planning objectives. He assists the chief of chaplains in coordinating Air Force Reserve matters.

He is a graduate of St. Anselm College, holds a master of arts in theology and a master of arts in theology from St. John's Seminary, and earned a master's degree and doctorate in sociology from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

-- Daniel L. Fitzgerald, Vice President-Investments at Stifel Nicolaus and Co., Boston. He previously was with Salomon Smith Barney for 25 years.

Fitzgerald is a graduate of St. John's Prep, Danvers, and Providence College. He earned a master's degree in international management from the American Graduate School of International Management, Glendale, Ariz., and completed a postgraduate program in business strategy at the University of Oxford, England.

He currently serves as a Trustee of St. John's Prep and is a member of the school's Trustee Planned Giving Advisory Committee. Fitzgerald is member of the Boston Economic Club, and is a parishioner of Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish, Marblehead, where he resides.

-- Kevin P. Martin, Sr., of South Boston, is principal and founding director of Kevin P. Martin and Associates, PC, an accounting firm with offices in Braintree and Danvers. As a certified public accountant, Martin concentrates his efforts on complex business transactions within the firm's tax department. His practice encompasses a variety of industries such as affordable housing, private enterprise and services, nonprofit organizations, and technology. He often provides advice relating to deal negotiations and structuring, private placement, tax optimization, the tax aspects of mergers and acquisitions, strategic dispositions and debt restructuring. Among his professional affiliations, Martin is a member of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

In 2011, he was presented with a Cheverus Award in recognition of his service to the Catholic community in the Boston Archdiocese. He is a Member of the School Advisory Board of South Boston Catholic Academy, and, with his wife, Claire, is a longtime active parishioner at Gate of Heaven Parish, South Boston.