“Hello, my name is Donna Marie Sticco, and I have the best job: I sing for God! Before becoming Choir Director and Cantor at Assumption in 2009, I enjoyed 30 years conducting an ‘a cappella’ schola, which brought chant and polyphony to churches in the New York metropolitan area. I am honored to have been recently appointed to the Archdiocesan Commission for Liturgical Music. Upon graduating from Seton Hall University, I launched a 34-year career in public elementary education. By 1978 I had also completed studies at a pontifical institute at St. John’s University, earning an MA in Catholic Doctrine and a catechetical diploma from the Vatican. (I also continued my studies at St. Joseph’s Seminary.) Simultaneous with public school teaching, I worked for 23 years as Director of Religious Education at the Church of Mary’s Nativity in Flushing, Queens, while devoting summers to training catechists on parish and graduate levels in Oregon, Wyoming and Virginia. Changing careers in 2004, I spent the next five years teaching high school theology, literature, and music and art appreciation. Writing “Notes from the Loft” for each week’s bulletin and teaching RCIA for Teens provide me with intellectual stimulation. My greatest joy, however is assisting our priests in the care of souls by monitoring the weekly visits of our Extraordinary Ministers, who have touched the lives of some 300 people at last count, 103 of whom have gone home to the Lord!”