When businessman Sean Lane was elected to be its Chairman by The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Board of Directors (effective July 1, 2018), he had been playing a critical role in raising funds for the parade as well. Additionally, as Vice Chair and co-founder of the St. Patrick’s Day Foundation —which has become the largest single source of financial support for the parade — Lane is a passionate supporter of both the Day and the Parade. The Foundation he co-founded also provides scholarships and supports the efforts of the Parade’s Affiliate Organizations in recruiting new members.
To that Lane said in the press release, “I am very grateful to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Board for this enormous honor and responsibility. The primary duties of the Chairman are to serve the parade community; to provide strategic leadership and to help ensure the future of the parade while remaining faithful to our mission of celebrating Irish faith, heritage and culture. Thanks to John Lahey [outgoing Parade Board Chairman], the Parade Board and to the generous support of donors to the Parade Foundation, the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade has the biggest surplus ever. This surplus has enabled us to revive the parade scholarship program, increasing the number of scholarships from six to nine, including three scholarships in Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s name to highlight the importance of catholic education. We want to greatly expand this program as we move forward.”
Said Lahey in the press release, “In Sean Lane and Ryan Hanlon [the Vice-Chair], the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade has found two leaders dedicated to our hallowed traditions of honoring St. Patrick and uniting Irish-Americans promoting Irish values and culture. This new leadership will help assure the financial stability which will allow us to continue these traditions and keep our beloved St. Patrick’s Day Parade marching into the future.”
Although a legal holiday only in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Saint Patrick’s Day is nonetheless recognized and celebrated throughout the United States. Primarily seen as a celebration of Irish and Irish American culture, the celebration was not Catholic in nature. Irish immigration to the colonies was dominated by Protestants, so its purpose was simply to honor the homeland. The Charitable Irish Society of Boston organized the first observance of Saint Patrick’s Day in the 13 Colonies in 1737 and it coordinated charitable works for Boston’s Irish community but they didn’t meet on March 16th again until 1794.
New York’s first Saint Patrick’s Day observance was similar to that of Boston, held on March 16th, 1762, in the home of John Marshall, an Irish Protestant, and over the next few years, the norm was informal gatherings by Irish immigrants. The first recorded parade in New York was by Irish soldiers in the British Army in 1766.
Irish patriotism in New York City continued to soar, and New York City’s parade continued to grow. Irish aid societies like Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society were created and marched in the parades. Finally when many of these aid societies joined forces in 1848, the parade had become not only the largest parade in the USA but one of the largest in the world. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers in the United States spent $4.4 billion on St. Patrick’s Day in 2016.
With that significance, of course, Lane’s title isn’t merely a ceremonial one, or simply about getting attention for him. So when asked what does the title mean for him, it was for something more than further headaches. Answered Lane, “You’re dealing with 200,000 people marching in the parade then one to two million watching on the sidelines, then all the media, so it’s an enormous responsibility. That’s why we restructured the board to have these committees that have power to do different things so everything doesn’t have to back come to the chairman. We formed a finance and media committee.”
The Parade organizers had never had a media committee before, so Lane felt it was about time. He noted, “Pat Smith did some publicity for us but he’s mostly working with Quinnipiac now. John Leahy is helping us now. But we need to get proactive. The challenge in the past with the parade is that everything was run by the chairman and there were no committees. They said there was a Parade Committee, but it was pretty much the Chairman. Now we’re trying to decentralize it and empower different groups. This year we had to re-do the bylaws, which took a couple of months.”
Most assume the television brings in money, but as Lane noted “[Our deal] needed to be revamped and we started on that this year. Right now it breaks even. It’s about getting the affiliated organizations on TV and promoting whatever the message is that year.
“We re-did the TV contract which took a couple months. We’re on seven platforms for TV this year and we were on only one last year. Hulu, Roku, NBC, Cozi, Apple TV, YouTube TV and the Catholic Faith Network to televise the Mass for the first time ever. We did a TV special on the aides to the Grand Marshal. They’re considered to be escorts to the Grand Marshall, but they’re really honorees. It’s typically people that have given their lives to service. We have a teacher, engineers, a Special Forces guy.
“There are now 16. We did a special about them and immigration for the Catholic Faith Network it’s faith and immigration and everyone’s story. There’s going to be a special on the Catholic Faith Network and Cardinal Dolan is filming a segment for it. It will air a minimum a four times leading up to the parade and everybody’s going to get a DVD. It’s a chance to tell their story. The Grand Marshall is of course, an accomplished person but there’s an army that runs this parade and put it on. You couldn’t do it (alone) and this is about highlighting these people and their organizations.”
When not dealing with the Parade, Lane is a Senior Vice President with a major Wall Street firm and provides financial advice to families, individuals, pensions and endowments and foundations. He explained, “Working for this business involved another connection, another Irish guy. I had a friend at his firm and so I ended up working here. My responsibilities here [have to do with] endowments, individual accounts, pensions, financial planning. I have clients that are English, and Korean, and Italian and they get a kick out of going to Irish events.”
He was awarded an honors Post-Graduate Diploma in Business and a B.A. from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He holds a Certificate in Advanced Financial Planning from NYU, and has earned both the Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner designations. He is a member of the CFA Institute, The New York Society of Securities Analysts, and the Financial Planners Association.
Lane was born in New York City and raised in Galway. “Though born in NY, I went back to Galway when I was 10. One television station came on at six o’clock in the evening. It was a slight change and you learned very to get out of the house if you were given something to do. You spend all day in the fields. It was a very small village in the middle of the country.
When I was in New York, St. Kevin’s was the school I was in in Flushing. I went to. It was very different [from school in Ireland which] seemed a lot more intense at the start. It depends, if you went to international schools and some were brilliant. I did calculus when I was 11 years old and I didn’t see it again until I was 15. My instructor was that kind of teacher. If he felt you could do something he kept giving you more. I didn’t catch onto later that he’d give you less if you did less. I did college there too in Galway.”
Lane was awarded an honors Post-Graduate Diploma in Business and a B.A. from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Lane returned to New York in 1993 and worked as a bartender until he secured a job in the financial services industry. He explained as to what made him return to the States? “I was working in the hotel industry at the local hotels including the Great Southern as well. The unemployment was 20-25% there in Galway so no one was making any money. This was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. You could work 80 hours and make like a 100 dollars after tax, it was ridiculous. I finished college and my post grad in Galway, skipped a year of school and got into college when I was 16. I was quite good at languages and math, but in French. It was all about the girls and that’s how I chose my major. But I was a year younger than anyone so they wouldn’t date me — but that’s a whole other story.”
After a chuckle and a pause, He continued, “So anyway, I had been coming over and the hotel would let me leave in the summer to make more money. I was working and I’d come over in the summer and work. And that’s how I met Austin Delaney and ended up staying.
“Ten or 12 years ago, I met some of the parade guys. They asked me to help form an organization. There’s a lot of great guys in the Knights of St. Patrick’s that do fundraising.”
As a first-generation Irish American born in New York, Sean is deeply involved in this community. Beside he NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade Chairmanship and cofounding the Foundation, he is on the advisory board of the 69th Regimental Trust, the Irish National Theatre, the Galway University Foundation, and the Leadership Circle for the Northwell Health Department of Medicine. In 2017, Sean was appointed as an honorary member of the 69th Regiment for services to the military by the U.S. Secretary of the Army. And since 2011, Sean has been honored each year as one of the 50 most prominent Irish Americans on Wall Street by Irish America Magazine.
He holds a Certificate in Advanced Financial Planning from New York University, and has earned both the Chartered Financial Analyst and Certified Financial Planner designations. He is a member of the CFA Institute, The New York Society of Securities Analysts, and the Financial Planners Association. He is now a Senior Vice President for a major Wall Street firm.
Lane is an honorary member of the 69th Infantry Regiment, the Fighting 69th, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Regimental Trust. He also serves on the U.S. Board of the Irish National Theatre, the Galway University Foundation, and the Leadership Circle for the Northwell Health Department of Medicine.
Lane and his wife, Cielo, have two children, Sarah, 14, a lector at St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Garden City, and Ryan, 12, an altar-server at St. Joseph’s. Though he is deeply engaged locally, he’s also concerned with the big issues. As Sean explained, “This year [the Parade’s theme] is immigration. In the past, it was the peace process with George Mitchell and education. Immigration is a hot topic and formed the Emerald Isle Immigration Center 25 years ago. The majority of their clients are Spanish or Latin America as opposed to Irish. We have a good board and usually it’s about what’s of concern or topical with our community.
“Immigration is front and center. In 2017 there were 50 thousand Green Cards and we get 140. And we’re 20% of the population here. The Irish were dying for Visas since ‘08 when the economy was shaky and for whatever reasons the Visas stopped coming. That was always a natural relief valve for the Irish economy because such a horrible history of immigration that it’d help the economy because everyone was used to leaving and everyone had relatives somewhere else. But this wasn’t in the last wave in 08 during the crisis. We built the bridges and the cities along with the Italians and the Chinese. We dynamited the tunnels with the Chinese because no one else would do it at the time. We dug the coal mines with other immigrants. 200,000 of us, 10% of the Union Army was straight off the boat Irish. The 69th Regiment, I’m an honorary member and I believe it’s one of the most decorated regiments in the US Army. These were the guys that were the generals, the soldiers, the regular rank and file guys that performed all these heroics into all these battles.”
With the parade, it’s an opportunity to put a positive light on the immigration experience. “It’s positive, but we all needed support when we came over here. My brother likes to remind me he gave me the airfare. I paid him back a long time ago but he still brings it back. I had five Pounds in my pocket when I arrived here. So I personally understand the immigrant experience and share it, not only with my fellow Irish people but immigrants of all kinds. We hope to put the Parade’s focus on that.”