Two days before the Jesuit-run boys school’s annual football rivalry game against Christian Brothers-run St. John’s College High School, the Catholic Business Network of Washington, D.C. honored three men who happen to be Gonzaga alumni at their 11th annual gala on Nov. 6, 2025, which took place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown.
The graduates of Gonzaga College High School honored by CBN-DC included Matthew T. Carroccio, managing director of investments at The Monument Group, a division of Wells Fargo Advisors, who won the Founders Award, while Martin S. McCarthy, co-founder, director, and CEO at Founders Bank, was recognized as the Catholic Business Person of the Year, and Father Raymond B. Kemp accepted the Clergy of the Year Award.
During the last 11 years, CBN-DC has awarded grants totaling $1.6 million to support D.C. Catholic schools. CBN-DC President Justin Silvers and John T. Butler, a CBN-DC board member, served as co-masters of ceremony at the event.
Father Kemp – who serves as a special assistant to the president of Georgetown University for community engagement – paid tribute to about a dozen attendees of the event and offered everyone a D.C. Black Catholic history lesson. After serving as pastor of St. Augustine and Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian parishes in Washington earlier in his priesthood, he has focused his talents on teaching popular classes such as “The Church and the City” and “Struggle and Transcendence” at Georgetown University in recent decades.
But the priest wanted to pay tribute to an earlier assignment. “There’s no place like it,” Father Kemp said of St. Augustine Parish, which was founded in 1858 by free men and women of color, including people emancipated from slavery, and it is regarded as the mother church for African American Catholics in the nation’s capital.
“It’s the God we meet through the struggle,” Father Kemp said, when explaining the faith and resilience of Black Catholics.
He paid tribute to Gabriel and Mary Coakley, founding parishioners at St. Augustine, who successfully petitioned President Abraham Lincoln so that they could hold a Strawberry Festival on July 4, 1864, at the White House. He noted that event, attended by about 1,000 “Black folk,” raised $1,200 applied toward the mortgage at St. Augustine School, after the parish was founded by Black Catholics who earlier worshiped in the basement of St. Matthew’s Church (now the cathedral for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington).
Father Kemp also highlighted attendees at the event, such as his cousin Steve Kemp, whom he complimented for his financial support of Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg while Kemp headed SK Motors in Lanham, as well as Marcus Washington, president of Washington Jesuit Academy, whom Father Kemp first got to know at Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Parish. Father Kemp joked that Tyler Smith, a former student of his from Georgetown, is engaged in the appropriate form of legal, pharmaceutical sales. He told the audience about his first meeting John T. Butler and his sister Mary Butler Armstead in 1968 and asking them to sing and play the guitar at Sunday Masses at St. Augustine.
McCarthy co-founded Founders Bank in 2020, and it employs nearly 40 people. In his acceptance remarks, he noted that the number of banks in the United States has shrunk from about 10,000 in 2000 to fewer than 4,000 now. One of the ways he sees his bank growing and surviving in a challenging regulatory environment is through building strong relationships with Founders Bank’s customers.
He noted that while growing up in Chevy Chase and attending Blessed Sacrament School, before matriculating to Gonzaga, he and his brothers learned from their father “to work hard and be humble.” His father, in addition, taught them, “to not take yourself too seriously.”
Like the two other honorees, McCarthy reflects the Jesuit motto to be a “Man for Others,” since he serves on the board of the McKenna Center – which serves men struggling with homelessness and families facing food insecurity – and he is a trustee of the Sibley Hospital Memorial Foundation.
“I never worked a day in my life,” joked Carroccio, who has worked in wealth management for 25 years, after growing up in Little Flower Parish in Bethesda. Working with a team of 14 people at The Monument Group, Carroccio is known for maintaining an optimistic attitude and for his efforts to mentor and develop talent on his team. He serves on boards for Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, the Church of the Little Flower, Washington Jesuit Academy, Safe Shores DC, and Connelly School of the Holy Child in Potomac.
Another highlight of the event was Roy Castleberry, Jr., a senior at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, speaking about the value of the Catholic education he has received at St. Augustine School and Archbishop Carroll.
According to Anita Segreti, a longtime CBN-DC volunteer and board member, 320 people attended the event, which was an increase of 70 people from last year. Speaking to the Catholic Standard, she gave Justin Silvers, president of CBN-DC, credit for drawing a large crowd through his outreach, in addition to his attracting sponsors for the organization.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, CBN-DC pivoted from holding monthly breakfast meetings to scheduling executive luncheon events three or four times a year, in addition to the gala. Segreti gave Silvers credit for making this decision, since she said it is hard to draw people to breakfast meetings, while the last luncheon event, in October at the University Club, was sold out.
