Why Some Win And Some Lose During A Recession

My office was just blocks away from the World Trade Center. On 9/11, United Airlines flight 175 passed right by my window. It was the second plane.

The days that unfolded were chaotic for us all. But here’s what stuck with me the most…

Hank Paulson, then-Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO, left a message on our internal voicemail. He said the “people of Goldman Sachs” had a duty to return to their workplaces.
But I felt differently. Instead, I spent days at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue. There, I helped people comb through lists of artifacts to find anything that belonged to their loved ones.

I realized life was too short to waste time.

Over the weeks that followed, I knew I had another calling – to shed light on the shadiness of Wall Street and corporate America.

Much to the disappointment of my mother, I quit my job at Goldman. I gave up potential millions of dollars in compensation to freely tell the truth.

And over the years, I have done just that.