Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954, New York) is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. He assumed the position in 2006, following Henry Paulson’s departure to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush administration.
Blankfein was born in the Bronx, New York, into a poor Jewish family. He was raised in public housing managed by the New York City Housing Authority. His father, Seymour, worked as a postal clerk in Manhattan, and his mother was a receptionist at a burglar alarm company. Blankfein shared a bedroom with his grandmother, while his divorced older sister and her son stayed in the room next door. He worked as a peanut and hot dog vendor at Yankee Stadium. He received his primary and secondary education in public schools and at the B’nai Israel Hebrew School in New York. To earn money while attending Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, Blankfein worked as a lifeguard in 1971 and got in shape after years of struggling with his weight. He was a scholarship student at Harvard University and, to afford graduate school in 1975, he worked in the cafeteria. After completing his undergraduate studies, Blankfein earned a Juris Doctor (JD) from Harvard Law School in 1978.
In 1981, he applied to Goldman Sachs but was not accepted. He then worked for four years as a corporate tax attorney at Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. When Goldman Sachs acquired his employer, Blankfein automatically became part of the company he had previously failed to enter. He quickly built a successful career, joining Goldman’s trading division as a specialist in pricing precious metals at their London office. He is also president of the Rockefeller family’s Asia Society. Blankfein serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization focused on reducing poverty in New York City, and is an advisor to the Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
A statement he once made — “I’m doing God’s work” — has been widely reported in the media, including the Sunday Times, which juxtaposed his photo with an image of the Sun King on the front page of its supplement.
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