Established in spring of 2010, the Center for Spiritual Capital is a first of its kind at a Catholic university and second only in academia to Yale University’s Spiritual Enterprise Institute, which was founded by center director Nicholas Capaldi’s close friend Theodore Malloch.
Capaldi and center co-founder John Levert envisioned the Center for Spiritual Capital in fall of 2008, while meeting monthly with a small group of businessmen and women who discussed the intersection of Catholic values and free enterprise. The crash of global financial markets and public condemnation of the seeming greed and lack of morality in American corporations made the center’s foundation especially timely.
Through the additional generosity of co-founders Alan Arnold and Alden "Doc" Laborde, the Center for Spiritual Capital was founded as a full-service resource center, providing everything from curriculum enhancement and faculty development to seminar planning and advice to small corporations and nonprofits. The center is aimed at serving industry leaders and students alike, who choose to exercise more profound roles as entrepreneurs, in both commerce and culture, and to honorably contribute to the betterment of society.
Under the direction of its Founders and Advisory Committee, the center explores how creating wealth and jobs is one among many ways of achieving social justice, and continues the great social debate among Catholics of not whether to, but how to help the poor.