Face of Philanthropy: Giving Back Suits Them Well

03/01/2025
By Ed Brennen

For all the ways in which Wendy and John Geraci support UMass Lowell— their service on advisory boards, their endowed scholarship, their mentoring of students—perhaps nothing epitomizes their connection to the university more than the fact that both of their children are River Hawks.

“Sending our two kids is evidence of our belief in the school and the value of the education,” says John, a Manning School of Business accounting alum from the Class of 1997. He is managing partner at LGA, LLP, an accounting and business advisory firm in Woburn, Massachusetts.

Both Geraci children followed in their father’s Manning School footsteps: Gianna earned a business degree in 2023 (and now works as an associate at LGA), and Rocco is a sophomore business major. “I couldn’t get them on my side,” shrugs Wendy, who earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in photography and graphic design in 1997, and is now co-owner of All Sports Heroes, a Lowell-based distributor of uniforms and corporate promotional products. But she can take credit for her husband attending UML.

The Geracis met as high schoolers in Littleton, Massachusetts. John, a year older, was classmates with Wendy’s brother, whom he convinced to join him on the football team “as a way to get closer” to her. “Her brother was not an athlete, and he got the living crap kicked out of him for 12 months for me,” recalls John, whose ploy worked: He asked Wendy to her junior prom, and they’ve been together ever since. Admittedly “a terrible high school student with horrible SAT scores,” John eschewed college after graduating and worked at a grocery store. When Wendy decided to follow her passion for art at UMass Lowell a year later, John joined her.

“I had some amazing professors like Linda Kistler and John Collins who challenged you but also wanted to see you succeed,” says John, a first-generation college student. After graduating, John landed a job at the accounting firm Caturano and Co. in Boston, where he worked for more than 12 years. While there, he found a mentor in chief operating officer Chris McKenzie ’84, a fellow UML alum. In 2009, McKenzie was invited to join the Manning School Advisory Board; he accepted on the condition that John could join too. (McKenzie recently joined LGA as an advisor after retiring from the accounting firm RSM.)

“Being on the board has provided opportunities for more engagement on campus and giving back to the students, and I just enjoy the hell out of mentoring and guiding,” John says. Indeed, since joining LGA 15 years ago, John has built a steady internship pipeline with his alma mater, and he estimates that half of his new hires each year are UML grads.

“I’m so proud of the school,” says John, who received a University Alumni Award in 2022. “As much as the campus ha been enhanced and the programming is stronger, when you compare the student body today to when we were there, it’s still a bunch of hungry, blue-collar go-getters.” Wendy hopes to offer design and marketing internships to UML students at All Sports Heroes, which she has co-owned with friends Tom and Sharon Delmore since 2023.

“Coming in here on the creative side has been so fulfilling. It brings me back to that part of my passion,” says Wendy, who knew that her B.F.A. degree would give her a chance to try different things throughout her career.

Coming out of UML, she worked at a photography studio in Boston and a graphic design firm in Woburn, Massachusetts. After Rocco was born, she shifted gears and opened a day care center that she ran out of the family home in Dracut, Massachusetts, for more than a decade. As the kids got older, Wendy “got back into the working world” and landed a job with a craft beer distributor in Boston, where she led a graphic design team for five years. In 2022, she joined LGA as a graphic design specialist, a role she continues while running All Sports Heroes.

“My journey has evolved, and I got a lot of that through the journey that I had at UMass Lowell,” says Wendy, who recently joined the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Advisory Board. “I’m really excited about the new dean, Sue Kim. She has so much passion and energy.” LGA and All Sports Heroes are both corporate sponsors of UML Athletics, and LGA will have a sign (designed by Wendy) on a hockey dasher board at the Tsongas Center this year.

About five years ago, Wendy and John established the Geraci Family Endowed Scholarship, which supports undergraduate Manning School students who have a GPA of 3.0 or higher and are active in the Joy Tong Women in Business student organization. “UMass Lowell absolutely served as a catalyst for everything that I’ve accomplished, so giving back in perpetuity is something that I feel we have to do,” John says. “There are so many alumni who have achieved so much success coming from such a value-based institution. How do you not attribute so much of your success to UMass Lowell?” “And how can you not give back to the university and the next generation of students?” Wendy adds. “It would be a shame not to support that.