Ed Calnan ’93

Our next award winner was quite literally a big man on campus in the early 90s. Ed Calnan captained the men’s rugby team to the New England championship in 1993. We’re told he owned his friend Todd Sweeney on the intramural basketball courts and bounced many a fake ID from the front door of the Blarney Stone. He may also have been a runner up in the short-lived but oh-so-entertaining ‘Mr. SMC’ pageant.

But Ed played many meaningful roles on campus, volunteering with MOVE, as a member of the residence life staff, mentoring the newly founded women’s rugby team which got its start in 1992, and helping the men’s rugby team over many years. He had a large and very loyal group of friends who remain close to this day, and he enjoyed being on campus for two years with his younger sister Bridget, class of ’95.

After college, hard work and ingenuity helped Ed’s career take off quickly. He led sales, sales management and field operations at early-stage, turnaround, and mature software companies, culminating with the co-founding of Seismic, a leader in global marketing and sales enablement solutions. He is now Managing Partner at 10,000 Pens in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

All along, Ed stayed exceptionally loyal and generous to Saint Michael’s, and was always willing to pay it forward to Purple Knights on and off campus. He has served as a panelist at the Career Symposium on campus, and at the Boston Career Seminar three times. He has attended alumni luncheons, socials, and a farewell event for one of his biggest mentors, Dave Landers. In 2005, he organized a generous gift of software that greatly benefitted the Saint Michael’s business department, making it the first undergraduate program in the country with access to the powerful technology. Ed has humbly supported scholarships for friends and mentors, capital projects on campus and his beloved rugby program, encouraging others to support it, too.

Ed volunteers with Marblehead Youth football and St. Mary’s Regional High School in Lynn, Massachusetts. His adores his wife Erin Hegarty and his sons Michael and Sean Calnan. He’s the kind of alumni we’re glad to call our own, which is why the Saint Michael’s College Alumni Association is happy to name Ed Calnan a 2023 Alumnus of the Year.