I Want Your Job: Mikey Stamatis ’26, Clerk at New Haven Superior Court
For a good chunk of the Providence College community, the last name “Stamatis” rings a bell. Some may know of John Stamatis, who teaches marketing. Others think of a recent graduate who was frequently outfitted in the quintessential Friars Club white coat, Mikey Stamatis ’26. Whichever way your mind goes, the image is a positive one.
What was Stamatis’s time at PC like?
Although it seemed like most of his time was spent giving tours or holding doors, Friars Club was only one of many clubs Stamatis was involved in during his time at PC. As a management major and humanities minor, his interests spread across the board. He played piano for St. Cecilia’s Ensemble at Thursday night adoration in St. Dominic’s Chapel. He was part of the Leadership Fellows during his sophomore year and as a junior, started his on-campus job with the Intramural Athletic Board. He spoke at events for the Honors Program and in front of hundreds of students in Peterson Recreation Center at Admitted Students Day. After this, Stamatis realized that people are going to remember him in ways that he didn’t necessarily expect.
How did he begin to discover his passion?
Stamatis’s various extracurricular interests mirrored his different interests in the classroom. He added his humanities minor after exposure to the Development of Western Civilization curriculum, as well as the core classes, looking for ways to continue learning about the Catholic intellectual tradition. Still, he focused his professional work on searching for different ways he could make use of his management studies.
He worked his first internship as a service and operations intern at Amica Insurance, handling billing, learning underwriting, and collaborating on team projects. He prides himself on being the only intern to receive a life insurance referral, meaning he secured a phone sale for a life insurance policy and then referred the client to a sales representative.
Despite his success there, Stamatis didn’t know if insurance was right for him. “I wanted my career to be something I’m passionate about,” he said. This led him to his pre-senior year marketing internship at Coca-Cola. He called this position a sort of “divine providence,” as his father spent many years working at Pepsi. While he enjoyed learning about the art behind the packaging and forming relationships with summer seasonal retailers, he entered senior year still looking for his passion.
Finally, he discovered it when taking his honors colloquium: Law and Literature with John Scanlan, Ph.D., professor of English. Stamatis had considered law school in the past but gave himself different reasons to back out of it: debt, more education, not making money right away. But this class re-oriented him to a different goal, one that he is pursuing today.
What does a clerk for the New Haven Superior Court do?
Now, Stamatis works in the criminal court division of the New Haven Superior Court’s Clerk’s Office. He has sat in trials while murderers have been sentenced and witnessed victims reading statements about losing loved ones or confronting criminals. But on a day-to-day basis, he spends his mornings in a criminal courtroom with the presiding criminal judge. This courtroom handles the docket, or calendar, and assigns cases that need to go to trial or to other judges. Stamatis keeps track of all the files for that day: motion hearings, arraignments, sentencings, and psychological evaluations. He manages this all while recording what goes on in the room. Then during the second part of his day at his desk he handles back-end record-keeping— things like exhibits, motions, appeals, sentence modifications, and scheduling.
He says that there’s been a huge learning curve with this job. Starting out, he didn’t know all the terms and acronyms his colleagues were using. But being open to asking questions and building your knowledge base is the only way to get more comfortable. And luckily, his management degree from the Providence College School of Business provided him with the soft skills necessary for this job. He is able to interact with prosecutors, judges, and even defendants with ease. His time here taught him to be curious and especially to be humble. “You have to be okay with still learning,” he said.
What’s next for Mikey Stamatis?
Who knows where Stamatis will be five years from now? In keeping with his theme of pursuing a passion, he is not sure if he will stay in criminal law. He loves it now, but knows law school will probably broaden his perspective and introduce him to other possibilities. But what he takes from his job is a lesson that surely was planted during his time at Providence College: justice is rooted in humanity and being good neighbors to one another. At the end of the day, everyone he meets is human and his or her justice is the end goal.
While Stamatis’ courtroom coat couldn’t be further from the white one decked out with pins that he sported at Providence, he still carries with him all the values that PC instilled.
