BEHIND THE VISION - DOING WHAT MATTERS
Mr. Caruso is the co-founder/owner of the Trenton Thunder Double-A minor league affiliate over 27 years with the Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, NY Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, and now the founding member of the MLB Draft League. Also, co-founder of the Lakewood BlueClaws, a Single-A partner of the Philadelphia Phillies. The Trenton Thunder has been recognized with national acclaim as the leading marketing franchise for 1998, 2003 and was selected as the Nation’s Number One Minor League Company in 2005 and 2013. The Lakewood BlueClaw organization has been recognized with National Marketing Awards in 2002 and 2005 and co-founder of the PatriotFundInc.org raising funds for our military veterans.
His banking career began in the real estate lending department of Citizens State Bank and included more than $500 million of regional real estate financing in four years in the 1970’s leading to expanded service as senior loan officer of all corporate lending where he supervised a staff of twenty. During that time as senior lending officer, he engineered and led the expansion of the corporate finance function and diversification of the corporate lending market base, as well as gaining a strong working knowledge of corporate and real estate financing strategies, market evaluation techniques, and real estate law as applied to workouts and foreclosures.
Mr. Caruso left Citizens to serve a two-year term as Vice President of First Federal in the early 1980’s where he used his skills to create a construction lending product line, a loan production facility in Florida and a New Jersey-based mortgage company specializing in residential loans. During his time in banking, Mr. Caruso was responsible for projects such as hotels, timeshare and condominium developments, malls, raw land acquisition and development, marinas, and mixed-use developments to name a few completing successful transactions valued in excess of $1 Billion through 1983. His expertise has been sought by various industry groups such as the New Jersey Banking Association Mortgage Committee and the New Jersey Shore Builders Association, where he served as Board member, consultant, and contributing writer for the association newsletter.
Mr. Caruso is a member of the Board of Trustees for his alma mater, Florida Institute of Technology, where he completed an undergraduate degree in Management Science at the University. He also earned an MBA with Honors from Monmouth University with a concentration in finance and economics. Additional training at the School of Real Estate Finance at Ohio State University as well as listings in Who’s Who Among Students (1973) and Who’s Who in Finance and Industry attest to his early and ongoing commitment to excellence in finance and management and he has received the Nathan M. Bisk College of Business Alumni of the Year Award and has been selected as one of the top sixty alumni for the university and is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
Mr. Caruso is a founding member of The Patriot Fund and a contributor to Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse, former member of Board of Trustees for the Pi Kappa Alpha Foundation and has been inducted into the Order of West Range as a distinguished member of Pi Kappa Alpha. Most recently he has been listed as a Founding Member of the of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and the Joseph Caruso Family Scholarship at Florida Institute of Technology.
Mr. Caruso is proud to be noted as the co-founder of the 501(c)(3) Grand Slam We Care Foundation which has contributed over Eight Million Dollars to local charities primarily for education-based initiatives and co-founder of the PatriotFund.org raising funds for our military veterans.