From Orphanages to Wall Street: The Unlikely New York Story of Ed Hajim

NEW YORK, NY - Some of the most remarkable New York stories are not about the people who arrived in the city with everything. They are about the people who arrived with almost nothing and found a way to build a life.

Ed Hajim's story is one of those.

Long before he became a prominent Wall Street executive, philanthropist, university trustee and author, Hajim was a young boy whose childhood was defined by uncertainty. Taken from his mother's family by his father when he was three years old, Hajim was driven from St. Louis to California and subsequently left in a series of foster homes and orphanages. By the time he eventually reached college, he had lived in more than 15 different places. Some of those early years were spent in orphanages in New York City.

It would have been easy for that beginning to dictate the rest of his life.

Instead, Hajim built a career that took him to the highest levels of the financial industry.

His journey eventually led him to the University of Rochester, the U.S. Navy and Harvard Business School, followed by senior positions at major financial firms including E.F. Hutton and Lehman Brothers. He later became chairman and CEO of Furman Selz and held leadership positions with ING Barings, ING Aeltus Group, ING Furman Selz Asset Management and MLH Capital. He is now chairman of HighVista Strategies.

But the professional résumé tells only part of the story.

For much of his adult life, Hajim kept his childhood largely private. Even his wife and children did not know the full extent of his early experiences until years later. His background became more widely known when he became chairman of the University of Rochester's Board of Trustees and the university researched his history in connection with his philanthropy.

That history ultimately became the subject of his 2021 memoir, On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom, written with Glenn Plaskin.

The book traces the unlikely path from a childhood spent moving between foster homes and orphanages to a career in finance, while examining the decisions, relationships and principles that shaped Hajim along the way. Published by Skyhorse, the memoir presents his life not simply as a story of professional achievement, but as an examination of what it means to construct a meaningful life after an extraordinarily difficult beginning.

For Hajim, education became one of the most important turning points.

His time at the University of Rochester helped put him on a different trajectory, and his relationship with the institution continued for decades after graduation. After serving as a trustee for 20 years, he became chairman of the university's Board of Trustees in 2008 and served in that role for eight years. He also made a $30 million gift to the university, which supported scholarships and the creation of the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

That commitment to education reflects something larger in Hajim's story: the belief that a person's beginnings do not have to determine where they end up.

His philanthropy has extended beyond education. Through the Hajim Family Foundation, he has supported organizations working in education, health care, arts and culture and conservation. In 2015, he received the Horatio Alger Award, which recognizes individuals who have achieved success despite significant adversity.

Yet Hajim's interest in the question of how people build successful lives did not end with his memoir.

His second book, The Island of the Four Ps, takes a very different approach. Rather than another traditional business book, Hajim describes it as a "think-about-it book" presented as a modern fable. The story centers on four ideas: Passions, Principles, Partners and Plans. Together, they represent the framework Hajim believes can help people think more deliberately about their futures and the choices they make along the way.

The ideas are rooted in lessons that Hajim says he has carried throughout his professional and personal life.

His approach to leadership has also emphasized the importance of being invested in the people around you. In an interview about his career, Hajim discussed the responsibility leaders have to demonstrate that they care about their teams and the people they work with, rather than viewing leadership solely through the lens of financial results.

That perspective may be especially relevant in New York, a city where ambition and reinvention are woven into everyday life.

New York has long attracted people who arrive with a particular vision of what their lives might become. Hajim's relationship with the city is more complicated. As a child, he experienced New York through orphanages and instability. Decades later, his professional life placed him within the world of Wall Street, while his philanthropic work allowed him to direct resources toward education and opportunity.

The contrast is striking.

The boy who once had little control over where he would live eventually became a person with the ability to help determine where other people could go.

That may be one of the most compelling aspects of Hajim's story. His success is not simply measured by the companies he led or the positions he held. It is also reflected in the way he chose to use that success after reaching the top of his profession.

His life offers a different definition of the American success story. It is not simply about moving from poverty to wealth or from obscurity to prominence. It is about what happens after a person has achieved professional success and has the opportunity to decide what that success should mean.

For Hajim, part of the answer has been education, philanthropy, family and sharing the lessons he learned along the way.

His story also challenges the idea that a person's identity is fixed by the circumstances into which they are born. A childhood marked by abandonment became part of his history, but it did not become the conclusion of his story.

Instead, it became one of the experiences from which he built his approach to work, leadership and life.

Today, Ed Hajim's books offer readers a chance to look behind the career of a Wall Street executive and understand the experiences that shaped him long before the boardrooms and financial institutions.

For a city built on reinvention, it is a story that feels particularly at home in New York.

Sometimes the most important part of a person's journey is not where they started or even where they ultimately arrived. It is the choices they made between the two.