HWS News
3 August 2026 Curiosity, Opportunity and Compassion
Four years at HWS shaped Trustee Jonathan Mothner's approach to work, life and people.
When Jonathan Mothner '85 and his family pledged $775,000 to Hobart and William Smith, they were honoring the experiences that made the gift possible.
“It’s about the professors who challenged my thinking, financial aid that opened the door to college and a semester abroad in London that changed how I think about the world,” he says.
At Hobart and William Smith, courses on the history of science taught by Professor Emeritus of Psychology Martin J. Kelly Jr., permanently altered how Mothner thinks about learning.
“I wasn’t going to be a chemist, a physicist or an engineer, but learning about those disciplines historically was eye opening,” Mothner remembers. “Professor Kelly was so excited about the subject matter, and I was the kind of student that engaged pretty actively when I was in a class I was excited about.”
After graduating cum laude with a degree in economics, Mothner earned a law degree from New York University and built a distinguished legal career that has spanned prosecution, litigation, compliance, risk management, corporate law and executive leadership. Today, he is Executive Vice President and Chief Risk and Legal Officer at Synchrony Bank.
It was Professor Kelly’s courses, he says, that ignited a desire to keep learning beyond the scope of law and economics — a curiosity that also inspired his family to give $250,000 to the Fish Center for the Sciences, where a second-floor chemistry laboratory will bear the Mothner name.
New viewpoints deepen understanding
Beyond their generous contribution to the Fish Center, the Mothners this year made a $25,000 gift to continue funding the Mothner Family Annual Fund Scholarship, which they have faithfully funded since 2013. They also made a $500,000 bequest that will establish the Mothner Family Endowed Scholarship Fund for financially deserving HWS students.
As undergraduates, both Mothner and his wife, Eve Konstan, who attended Eckerd College and Columbia Law School, received scholarship support that made college possible.
“Throughout high school, I was doing what I was doing largely because of what other people expected me to do,” he says. “But Hobart — and importantly a Hobart alumnus — invested in me. Between that and the loans I took on, I realized I needed to make the most of the opportunity. It was a bit of an epiphany.”
That realization transformed him from a student meeting others' expectations into one driven by his own ambitions.
Navigating foreign cultures develops confidence
A semester in London — one of his first times abroad — proved equally transformative. “It changed the way I live my life and instilled this really burning desire to see the world,” he says. “It led me to explore unfamiliar cultures and, as a young lawyer, to accept a year-long assignment in Japan, despite having never visited the country.”
That curiosity became a family value. In the midst of busy careers, he and Konstan, who is Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer and Secretary at SiriusXM, have continued to seek out new travel destinations while encouraging their children to embrace the world with the same sense of adventure.
The playing field is not aways level
Mothner says his international experiences have fundamentally influenced the way he understands people. Early in his career as a federal prosecutor, those lessons helped him recognize that while individuals are responsible for their actions, they do not all begin with the same options or advantages.
"Not everybody comes to opportunities with the same ability to take advantage of them," he says. "You see a lot of people doing bad things. But you also see a lot of people who just made bad decisions or were forced to make bad decisions. A lot of folks need some support to help them get where they need to go."
Those experiences — as a scholarship recipient, a student challenged to think creatively by faculty, and a traveler whose worldview expanded through study abroad — continue to shape Mothner's service as an HWS trustee and donor.
Through their gift, Mothner and Konstan are helping create the same opportunities for future generations of students.
Top: The Mothner Family, Zachary, Eve Konstan, Jonathan and Alexandra
