Meet Our Founders- Pete and Tricia DeMaio

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Pete DeMaio grew up in Ventnor City, NJ just one block from the

beach. His maternal Grandmother and paternal Grandfather both

immigrated to the USA. Pete’s parents met in Atlantic City NJ as

teenagers and Pete later became the youngest of their four boys. 

Pete and his wife Tricia met and began dating in high school.

They just celebrated 30 years of dating, 20 years of marriage and

are so thankful to still be together. God has Blessed them with 7

absolutely beautiful children, 4 boys and 3 girls ranging from Age

19 down to 5. 

Tricia and Pete have happily taught marriage prep and NFP for

nearly 15 years. In addition, Pete has spoken in our schools to our youth

for Free since 2008. 

In recent years, Pete had the honor to Lector, serve Mass and

participate as a Christian initiation sponsor at the Basilica of St

Peter and Paul in Philadelphia PA for Pastor, Father Dennis Gill.

Pete and his brother, Chris were able to serve Mass together for the first time since they

were children. Chris was just ordained a Permanent Deacon in June of 2024.

Despite being a beautiful image of Marriage, Family and Faith, it

wasn’t always this way. Pete and Tricia made so many horrible

mistakes in their early years of dating through high school, college

and beyond. Looking back, they feel they both lacked solid

formation and education. This has become the driving force

behind their vision for their new organization. 

Tricia graduated from Villanova nursing school and worked for

Penn/Presbyterian for 15 years. She did her graduate work at Villanova 

to pursue her NP . Although Tricia had a passion for education and her career,

she fell in love with being a Mother and decided to stay home to raise their children

after their 5th child was born.  She is back to work and currently assisting 

Regina Luminis Academy as the School Nurse and Director of Enrollment. 

Pete was extremely fortunate to have an extremely extensive background in Business. 

After losing his brother and almost losing his mother to cancer, Pete made a

career change in 2006 to help individuals and families with their 

Insurance & Financial needs. The career change, starting a new

business and starting their family took a massive toll on Pete and Tricia financially. 

They were nearly bankrupt in 2012 and remain extremely grateful

to their parents for all the love and tremendous support the couple received. 

With the assistance of their families, Pete and Tricia

persevered. While Tricia cared for the children, Pete applied all

his experience to their new business and God simply took care of

the rest. Thanks to a successful team, in 2014, Pete’s office

wound up earning the most prestigious award given by the fortune

100 corporation “Best In Company”. His Agency ranked #1 out of

10,000 Agencies countrywide. They went on to achieve this

award 3 years in a row, which was the first time ever in the

company’s 75-year history. 

Once Pete and Tricia were financially stable, they desired to fully

give their lives back to God. With Tricia’s continued support, Pete

applied to become a deacon for the Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, they were deferred due to the young ages of their

children, however, this opened the door for God to reveal other

plans for their lives. As Tricia was pregnant with their 7th child

and Pete was giving a keynote speech for area high schools, a

student asked the couple if they had considered starting their own

foundation. That seed began to take root that day and has been

growing ever since.

On August 6, 2021, the Sisters of Life directed Pete to go down in

the crypt at St Patrick’s Cathedral in NY and place his hand on

the tomb of Cardinal John O’Connor to ask what he wanted of his

life. A couple weeks later Pete received a phone call and was asked to take over as 

President of Pennsylvanians for Human Life

where he was tasked with breathing life back into PA’s oldest Pro-

Life organization founded in 1972. Pete acted as President,

volunteer Director and main speaker for PHL from 2021-2024. He

recruited a spiritual advisory board, academic advisory team, a

dozen new speakers, medical advisory team and launched a

student leader program amongst 20 local Archdiocesan high

schools. In 2023, under Pete’s leadership, PHL gave 139 in

person presentations to 12,000+ students from multiple states.

Over the past 20 years, Pete and Tricia have deeply experienced

God’s tremendous Love, Forgiveness, Mercy, Healing and Grace.

They genuinely love sharing their journey and very personal story

with others. Their talks include a powerful combination of dating,

love, marriage, theology of the body, post abortive healing,

catholic apologetics, importance of the sacraments, Virtue vs.

Vice, surrender, purification, parenting and living your best life

now. Allowing God to be at the center of their marriage and family

has led Pete and Tricia to experience the true Joy, Fulfillment and

Happiness in their lives God intended for them all along. 

One of their greatest moments recently was in 2023 when they

had the privilege to share their testimony with 4,200+ attendees at

the Knights of Columbus and Sisters of Life event, Life Fest,

which is held just prior to the March for Life in DC. 

Pete and his good friend, Andrew Jacoby, started First Fishermen

media in 2022. They have several podcasts such as, the Men for

Life podcast, The Called, The Dominican option, From Kensington

with Love, and much more media to come. 

Pete loves sports. His favorites are basketball, baseball and

watching the Pittsburgh Steelers. As a father, Pete is thankful to

have coached their children and many other local children over

the years, however, the couple’s greatest joy is just simply

watching their children play and excel at a variety of different

sports and activities while growing in their Faith. 

The families favorite places to spend time off are at the Beach in Ventnor, NJ and Disney World. 

In 2024, Pete and Tricia officially launched their new non-profit,

“Mission Love and Life”.