Thornwood, New York - Originally from South Africa, Peter Freissle is the CEO of Polydeck Screen Corporation, a company that makes screen panels for coal, aggregate, and mining industries all over the world. His father had started the business in South Africa in 1959, and Peter was instrumental in building up the US branch that had been established in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1978. Thanks to his hard work and dedication, it grew quickly, expanding from 30 employees to over 200 and attracting clients from some of the biggest mines in the world.

As much as the business was growing, Freissle could not escape the nagging feeling that something was missing in his life. He was a practicing Catholic, happily married with four children, and doing well at work, and yet he still felt that something was off kilter. So when he heard about a local Ignatian spiritual exercises retreat offered by the Legionaries of Christ, he decided to give it a try.

That was when the revolution took him by storm, a storm he describes in his acceptance speech given October 20, in Thornwood, New York.