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VIDEORags to Riches CEOs: Lloyd Blankfein
By
Megan Barnett Nov 17, 2009 7:45 am
His escape from the projects began with a college scholarship.
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He’s certainly faced sharp criticism in recent months, including the now-famous accusation that Goldman Sachs is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”
But Blankfein has quelled his critics for now, and it will likely take a lot more to bring him down. After all, the Harvard-educated executive has triumphed over adversity before. He grew up in a New York housing project in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of East New York in Brooklyn.
Blankfein called the Linden Houses home from the time he was three until he escaped to Harvard after graduating as valedictorian of Thomas Jefferson High School’s 1971 class. Built in 1958, the housing project consists of 19 buildings that hold more than 4,000 residents. Search for news about the Linden Houses today and you’ll find a slew of petty crime mentions in local police blotters and the occasional murder that makes it into the pages of the big city papers.
Blankfein’s home life was likely much better than that of many of his neighbors. His father worked the night shift sorting mail at a Manhattan post office, while his mother worked as a receptionist for a burglar-alarm company. “One of the few growth industries in my neighborhood,” Blankfein told Time in a recent interview.Now 55, Blankfein took his first job selling concessions at Yankee Stadium when he was just 13. He worked strictly for commissions, according to the New York Times, making 10 or 11 percent on 25-cent soft drinks.
When he was 16, Blankfein left his disadvantaged background to begin his journey on what he calls his “advantaged background.” He applied to state and local schools like Brooklyn College as well as a few Ivy League schools like Harvard, where he won enough money in scholarships and aid to attend. A classmate of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s, Blankfein soon set his sights on Harvard Law School. He has said he had big plans to eventually win a seat on the Supreme Court, but he ended up leaving his legal job to become a trader just a few years out of school.
Blankfein and his family live just 15 miles from the Linden Houses today but his lifestyle is a world apart. In 2008, the Goldman chief paid cash for a $26 million penthouse in Fifteen Central Park West, a coveted Robert Stern-designed luxury tower. Blankfein’s duplex is said to include a chauffeur waiting room.
Like many on Wall Street last year, Blankfein didn't receive a year-end performance bonus. However, he still took home nearly $45 million in cash and stock awards for the year -- a far cry from the Yankee stadium cola commission.
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