A Rags to Riches story: Career and Life Lessons from Ed Hajim

A Rags to Riches story: Career and Life Lessons from Wall St Exec Ed Hajim, author of “On The Road Less Traveled”

**ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED**: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom, Ed details his journey from surviving a childhood kidnapping and living in orphanages and foster homes to becoming a highly influential businessman on Wall Street. While discussing his professional accomplishments, Ed speaks on behalf of his Harvard experiences and provides insight into how he achieved enormous success despite facing adversity.

At the age of 3, Ed Hajim is kidnapped by his father, driven cross-country, and told his mother is dead. He presses his face against the car window, watches the miles pass and wonders where life will take him.

Where you’d least expect.

In a memoir filled with human drama, wisdom and timeless life lessons, ON THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom (Skyhorse; March 2, 2021) tells the improbable story of how Hajim bounced from foster homes to orphanages, in a daily struggle to survive, to living the American dream as an accomplished Wall Street executive and model family man with great moral fiber and the means to give back to a world that seemed intent on rejecting him.

It’s a powerful story touched with family trauma, deprivation, and adversity balanced by a life of hard work and philanthropy.

**ABOUT OUR SPEAKER**

Ed Hajim, the son of a Syrian immigrant, is a seasoned Wall Street executive with more than 50 years of investment experience. He has held senior management positions with the Capital Group, E.F. Hutton, and Lehman Brothers before becoming chairman and CEO of Furman Selz. Hajim has been the co-chairman of ING Barings, Americas Region; chairman and CEO of ING Aeltus Group and ING Furman Selz Asset Management; and chairman and CEO of MLH Capital. He is now chairman of High Vista, a Boston-based money management company. In 2008, after 20 years as a trustee of the University of Rochester, Hajim began an eight-year tenure as chairman of the university’s board. Upon assuming that office he gave the school $30 million—the largest single donation in its history—to support scholarships and endow the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Through the Hajim Family Foundation, he has made generous donations to organizations that promote education, health care, arts, culture, and conservation. In 2015, he received the Horatio Alger Award, given to Americans who exemplify the values of initiative, leadership, and commitment to excellence and who have succeeded despite personal adversities.