When I first had the idea to start researching the academic degrees of famous/successful people it started after I read the degree of my next person. A history major turned financial services leader, Lloyd Blankfeind is the Chairman and CEO of world famous investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Whether you love or hate Blankfein there is no denying that his story is a unique one for a Wall Street mogul. Unlike many stars on Wall street, Blankfein was not spoon-fed an easy life. He was not born into a successful family with its roots planted in the financial world. Blankfein was brought up in the projects and his parents truggled to make ends-meet. He was a strong student and class valedictorian in high school, going off to college was the first time he left New York City.
Blankfein went on to study at Harvard as a history major. Blankfein got in to Harvard on a scholarship but he was not used to the Harvard atmosphere which consisted of many people from high social classes that went to prep-schools. During his undergrad it is said that Blankfein would procrastinate and wait until the last day to start studying for his exams, but despite that he was still a good student. As time passed however Blankfein became less insecure about being a kid from the projects and more used to the higher paced environment of Harvard, his ambition to succeed grew. When talking about his ambition Blankfein said, "Ambition is your inner voice that tells you you can and should strive to go beyond your circumstances or station in life. You have to overcome obstacles, pressures and self-doubt and you have done it because you have ambition. You want to succeed for your families nad yourselves. And there is no more powerful force through which to do that than through education and know how.
After his undergrad. Blankfein went on to law school at Harvard Law School. After law school he took up some jobs in law to pay off his student loans but then decided he wanted to pursue a career in finance. Blankfein applied for several firms including Goldman Sachs, but he was rejected from the firm in which he would later become the CEO.
Later in life Blankfein discussed his switch from law to finance. Blankfein said he wanted to work in a world which was constantly in motion where he could pick up the newspaper and legitimately be impacted by what he was reading. He said that his issue with a career in law was that he could be working on a case which took place 20 years ago and working with laws that were written one hundred years ago and that was not exciting enough to get him to come to work hungry every morning.
Blankfein's story always particularly interested me as it was the time where I really noticed someone completely pivot from what they studied in undergrad to a new field. Most history majors who I met during my undergrad did not have much of an interest in going into finance but Blankfein's story goes to show that your undergrad does not define what you will end up doing for the rest of your life. This was a lession that hit home to me as I was transitioning my own career from political science to computer science.