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Decades before his phenomenal success leading financial titans like Citigroup, Joe Plumeri was a boy growing up in a row home in North Trenton in the middle of the 20th-century. His grandfather had emigrated from Sicily to the U.S. in 1892, and along with other Italians, Plumeri came of age alongside African-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Eastern Europeans.

Tensions sometimes flared between the diverse groups, but at other times they were able to find common purpose, like playing baseball on the fields of nearby ������ý���� College, where Plumeri’s mother and brother earned their bachelor degrees, and his father took classes.

“I feel the greatness of the country reflected in that neighborhood,” Plumeri says during an interview in his office on the third floor of a high-rise midtown building in New York City, some 70 miles north of his hometown.

On May 12, Plumeri will return to Trenton to deliver ������ý����’s Commencement address to more than a thousand graduating students. He’ll also receive an honorary Doctor of Laws. For the first time ever, the University’s Commencement Ceremony will take place at Trenton’s Sun National Bank Center, a place that Plumeri says likely wouldn’t exist without his family’s initial investment in Arm & Hammer Park (formerly Mercer County Waterfront Park). Plumeri and his father were instrumental in bringing the minor league affiliate of the New York Yankees to play in Trenton, a cornerstone of their vision to revitalize Trenton.

Plumeri’s rise in the state capital is indicative of his favorite phrase — “anything is possible” — which is repeated throughout his office, in artwork, on signs and elsewhere. It’s a lesson he has learned repeatedly, and not only as a boy on the baseball diamond. One of his first jobs in the city was digging sewers. Today, as part of his world-class resume, he is a co-owner of the Trenton Thunder, and the team plays on a field named after his father, Samuel Plumeri Sr.

The notion that anything is possible is one Plumeri feels young people need to hear. “I think students today might think there is less opportunity because of globalization, technology and the economy,” he says. “I believe just the opposite. The challenges of today are about how to make yourself compelling as a person. At the end of the day, it’s about standing out and being memorable.”

At 73, Plumeri practices what he preaches. He is full of energy and optimism, still looking ahead after a lifetime of improbable success. In 1968, while attending law school, Plumeri applied for a job at Carter, Berlind & Weill on Wall Street, incorrectly thinking it was a law firm. He ended up taking a job at the brokerage house nonetheless, his first step into the world of finance. Over the next three decades, he worked his way to the top, eventually serving as CEO of Citibank, North America, after working on the merger of Travelers Group and Citicorp into Citigroup. In 2000, Plumeri became the first non-British CEO of insurance broker Willis. He was also the company’s first CEO who had not been groomed in the insurance industry.

While Plumeri rose on Wall St. and beyond, his family stayed close to home, forging fulfilling careers that also often kept them connected to the community. His father, Samuel J. Plumeri Sr., was a former Trenton City Commissioner and well-respected businessman. Plumeri’s mother, Josephine Vacarro Plumeri '34, who earned a degree in secretarial science from ������ý����, began her career at the Trenton Board of Education. After she married her longtime love, she became her husband's partner in their real estate business.

Plumeri also has two brothers. Samuel J. Plumeri Jr. ’77 has worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey since 2004 as a Port Authority superintendent of police and director of public safety. Paul Plumeri is a blues musician (he was inducted in the national Blues Hall of Fame in 2013) who also worked as a housing inspector for the city of Trenton.

No matter what industry he was in, Plumeri approached running an organization the same way. He looked deeply into the nature of the business to tease out how he can make it different from its peers. With the Trenton Thunder, for example, he came to understand he was in the business of affordable family entertainment, not strictly baseball. “We’re going to make this an experience,” he recalls thinking.

Encapsulating the message of his 2015 book, The Power of Being Yourself: A Game Plan for Success by Putting Passion into Your Life and Work, he continues: “It’s not about subject matter. It’s about being yourself and getting people excited about your vision and showing them where they’re going. If the CEO doesn’t have vision, no one knows what they’re there for.”

Plumeri believes his lack of experience within the industries he led may have even helped him because it allowed him to exercise his curiosity. “I’m rarely content with what is,” he says. “Instead, I ask, ‘What else?’ If you don’t have imagination and commitment, things don’t happen.”

That kind of imagination has also spurred Plumeri to get involved with many ambitious philanthropic projects. As the lead donor and honorary chairman of the Make-A-Wish New Jersey Capital Campaign, he made a $3 million gift — the first seven-figure gift in the history of Make-A-Wish, which grants the wishes of children diagnosed with life-threatening medical conditions — that funded the construction of a one-of-a-kind 20,000-square-foot castle in Middlesex County that opened in 2011.

At his alma mater, William & Mary, he contributed a $2 million gift to create the Plumeri Awards for Faculty Excellence. (NPR called Plumeri’s 2011 commencement address at William and Mary one the 300 "Best Commencement Speeches, Ever.”) In 2015, Plumeri’s $5 million gift helped create the Joe Plumeri Center for Social Justice and Economic Opportunity at New York Law School — the law school he was attending when he stumbled into the world of finance.

Plumeri says a genuine concern for people is at the heart of his philanthropy — “especially people who cannot take care of themselves,” he adds. It’s also at the heart of his business philosophy. He says, “I don’t know of a company that is great where caring about people is not the number one priority.”

Despite a lifetime of traveling the world, those values were born in Trenton. “Being able to do the things that I have done coming out of North Trenton,” Plumeri says, “I realize that neighborhood was the best education I ever received.”