On the Road Less Traveled with Author Ed Hajim

Imagine if your father took you at three years-old, kidnapped you and then told you your mother was dead. Then, once taken to another part of the country, your father basically abandons you and leaves you to be raised in several different foster homes and orphanages. This is what happened to today's special guest, Ed Hajim, well before Google, Social media and all the ways we now track down folks. Ed was left in poverty, abandoned and feeling incredibly lonely.

When Ed was sixty-years-old, with the help of an old suitcase, he found letters indicating that  his mother was very much alive. He was angry with his then late father for being so selfish and taken Ed from his own mother. Learning his mother was alive, who he hadn’t seen since he was three-years-old, 57-years-later, everything Ed knew went upside down.  And his sense of trust questioned. He had to think, does he reach out to his mother, would she want to see him or reject him?

Ed explains his incredible story of resilience, discipline and using his inner voice to navigate his life -which is a true rags-to-riches American story -  in his just released inspiring and riveting memoir, On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom.

Despite his difficult early years, Ed learned to survive, to keep himself strong and focused. And step by step, he turned his life around, eventually living the American dream with the help of a NROTC college scholarship, got himself through the University of Rochester and then attended Harvard Business School. Became a Wall Street executive, a business tycoon of the highest order. In 2008, after 20 years as a trustee of the University of Rochester, Hajim became chairman of its board and gave the school $30 million to support scholarships and endow the Edmund A. Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - the largest single donation in its history.