Kenneth D. Daly

Kenneth D. Daly assumed his position as the ninth President at St. Thomas Aquinas College on July 1, 2020.

As the new President, Ken has committed to helping students navigate the current societal challenges by providing access to affordable education to prepare them for college, community service, and careers.

Daly was selected for his mission-focused leadership over a 30-year career in clean energy with National Grid and its predecessor companies, KeySpan and Brooklyn Union, serving local New York communities, supporting students, and leading emergency response plans. Ken completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at Harvard, earned an MS in Human Resource Management from New York University, an MBA in Finance from St. John’s University, and a BA in English from St. Francis College, and earned the distinguished Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

He is a passionate educator and has chaired and served on the boards of several colleges while teaching in the classroom as an adjunct professor at St. Francis College since 1992. Across his career, Ken has fostered strategic relationships with academia, supporting research and workforce development programs at colleges and STEM education programs in New York schools, which have resulted in innovative new programs, educational resources for under-served communities, and hundreds of jobs for the students.

President Daly transitioned into the role as President over six months, completing an industry leadership program for new college presidents, and working closely to support the college’s COVID-19 response plans. He has been actively developing funding programs to ensure educational access and affordability for all students and has been carefully preparing for the college’s Fall re-opening for students.

Across his career, Ken has fostered strategic relationships with academia, supporting research and workforce development programs at colleges and STEM education programs in New York schools. He was a member of the Board of Trustees at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, his alma mater, from 2011 to 2020, serving as a member of the Executive Committee and Chairman of the Finance Committee and previously serving on the Academic Affairs Committee. He also previously served as Chairman of the Business Advisory Council. Through his work on the Development Committee, he has raised millions of dollars for St. Francis and personally funded four scholarships. He was an Adjunct Professor of Management at St. Francis since 1992 and has also lectured at Harvard, MIT, New York University, St. John’s University, and in England, Italy, and Canada.

To support his clean energy agenda at National Grid, Ken launched the Institute of Gas Innovation and Technology (IGIT) at Stony Brook University, empowering students to research and develop new clean gas technologies and alternatives to natural gas. He served on the Board of Directors of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) at Stony Brook and as an advisor to the university’s Center for Integrated Electric Energy Systems (CIEES). Earlier, after having served as Chairman of the Kingsborough Community College Foundation Board, Ken launched a Customer Experience Management Academy (CXM) at Kingsborough, which gave students customer service experience at National Grid while they completed their college studies.

Addressing changes in workforce demographics, Ken strengthened electric line worker academies at community colleges in Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo and opened the industry’s first natural gas technician college academies in Long Island and Brooklyn—programs that have led to National Grid jobs for 500 students. He also played a key role in the launch of Energy Tech, a STEM high school for under-served students in Queens, and the innovative Brooklyn Tech STEM Pipeline program for under-performing middle schools in Brooklyn, while serving as commencement speaker at Energy Tech and Brooklyn Tech graduations.

Several colleges and high schools have honored him for his contributions to education and scholarship funding for students. He recently announced new four-year $50,000 scholarships and personally launched the Kenneth D. Daly Scholarship to support students and their families impacted by the recent COVID-19 and Social Justice crises in their local communities and will match contributions to provide support to students when they need it most.

President Daly, his wife Laurie, who will be volunteering at the college, and their four children are delighted to be a part of the STAC community and to give back to their students during this critical time.