Joan Squires is the executive vice president and chief information officer for Mutual of America Life Insurance Company based in New York.

A native New Yorker, Squires is third generation Irish. Her great grandparents hailed from counties Clare and Limerick, and Belfast. Squires grew up in a close-knit family.

“I had the good fortune of growing up close to all my grandparents,” she recalls. “They were characteristically Irish – very private people who rarely spoke of themselves or the hardships they encountered as first generation Irish Catholics in New York City. Yet their pride in being Irish was always abundantly clear.”

Squires is a graduate of the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York, and since 2006 has been chair of the board of the college. She is also a member of the board of trustees of the Catholic Health Care System of the Archdiocese of New York, a member of the International Society of Certified Employee Benefits Specialists, and a member of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society of the United Way.

Squires’ Catholic faith is extremely important in her life, and she once again salutes her Irish grandparents for making it so. “They possessed a deep and abiding Catholic faith, and instilled in their children the importance of service to others,” she says.

 

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