The PURSUITS of LIBERTY
IN JUNE 2021, family, friends, and former co-workers gathered in a banquet room at Harbour Trees Golf and Beach Club in Noblesville to celebrate the life of Nico Maloberti. Mourners remembered the 46-year-old, who spoke in a soft accent that followed him from his native Argentina, as gentle and kind and principled. He was known as the “nicest guy in the club,” the member recounted at the service, adding that some of the guys joked about hiring Nico to follow them around on the course as a morale booster just to say, “Good shot, Johnny!” He was a man who once disqualified himself during a club golf tournament for a rules violation. On the second day of the tournament, one of his partners texted him: “Nico, you don’t have to do this. We’re in last place.”
But some in attendance knew Maloberti had been troubled of late; they came looking for answers. Why had this loving husband and stepfather taken his own life?
Maloberti’s death was shocking, of course, because suicides almost always are. Easy explanations don’t suffice. Complicated ones can cloud more than clarify. Here at the memorial, loved ones—those who knew Nico Maloberti best—were naturally frustrated by both. But to an even greater extent, Maloberti’s inner circle was unsettled by details of an opaque workplace drama that had consumed the final years of his life and now seemed to take on added significance.
On June 21, the day before Maloberti died, he sent multiple emails to the Liberty Fund, Maloberti’s former employer. In and of itself, the act wasn’t unusual. He had been gone from the organization for just a few weeks. As an employee, Maloberti seems to have been a prolific communicator during the last years of his tenure with the powerful, private education foundation. He had served there for nearly 14 years until May, when he was fired over the phone on his way to work. After his termination, Maloberti told confidants that the dismissal was punishment for a yearslong series of events in which he alleged mission drift, deficient management practices, and potential tax negligence, despite asking for whistleblower protections from at least one of the Liberty Fund’s officers. According to the Liberty Fund’s board of directors, Maloberti’s concerns were shared with the board, thoroughly investigated, acted upon, and no actions were taken against Maloberti as a result of any concerns he raised regarding any Liberty Fund matter. Further, the board of directors says his position was eliminated along with four others from multiple departments as part of a strategic shift in priorities and programming recommended by Liberty Fund’s president and CEO, Sean Shelby, and supported by the Liberty Fund’s board of directors in May 2021.
But the content of at least one of the June 21 emails alarmed its recipients, and in a message sent to three men—Sean Shelby, board member and former president Emilio Pacheco, and chairman of the board Nate Feltman—Maloberti revealed that he hadn’t quite been himself, was working with his doctor to find the right dosage for an Adderall prescription, and apologized for the intensity of his past
