Alumni Spotlight Mark St. Peter, ‘81
CEO and Managing Director, Computing Source, a full service digital evidence solution for law firms and legal professionals A school closure. A dropped pencil. A carjacking. And cancer. For Mark St. Peter, ‘81, his path to CEO of a major company has had some unusual twists and turns. As a high school student, he thought he’d like to be a pediatric surgeon. One of his five younger sisters was born with a life-threatening condition, and a surgeon saved her life. Mark said, “I thought that was pretty cool. You could help someone out at a young age, someone with their whole life ahead of them.
8
“Br. Carl Malacalza really stood out. Right away he let me work on the school computer. I wrote some of the software DLS used for scheduling and grading. “I learned most of what I know about computers back in high school. How computers work. We had cassette tapes. I remember when we got the floppy drive. That was a big old deal.” Detour to Mack Avenue But a call in 1981 to Br. Carl Malacalza, who was teaching Computer Programming at DLS, from Joseph Versical, DLS ‘38, who owned an insurance agency, led Mark on an unexpected detour.
variables that go into setting a rate, and using what I had learned at DLS, wrote some software. I couldn’t wait for the end of the school day to go to his office and work on programs. When I was done, Mr. Versical offered me $2,500, plus $1,000 a year for rate changes in the program - which was an astounding amount of money. I was 17.” Mark went on that summer of 1981 to write programs for nearly 100 clients. Not bad for the kid from the 8 Mile and Gratiot area who attended Assumption Grotto, and used the profits from his 400-customer paper route to buy comic books. “I can never repay Mr. Versical. He did so much for me and my career.” A School Closure Mark began college at the University of Michigan, and thanks to Advanced Placement credits in Math, Chemistry, Calculus, and French, had sophomore status. But he could have just as easily ended up at Harvard or Stanford, Northwestern or Notre Dame. He had multiple academic scholarship offers from universities all over the country. However, the University of Michigan offered undergraduate and medical school scholarships.
Versical wanted to hire a student to write a software program to help his Grosse Pointe Woods agency figure out the best insurance policy rates for his clients. Br. Carl sent Mark to see Joe in his Mack Ave. office.
The multiple college scholarship offers were a deja vu of what Mark faced in eighth grade: he received scholarship offers from De La Salle, as well as Austin High School and Harper Woods Notre Dame. “Austin offered me a little more, so I took that scholarship,” says Mark.
“I knew zip about insurance, “ says Mark. “Mr. Versical showed me some printouts, and what he needed to have a program do. So I studied the printout, learned the 21
But Austin closed at the end of his freshmen year, and he found himself meeting with then-DLS Principal Br. Jerome Stevens, and asking for the scholarship DLS had offered him
