Elisha Wiesel


Elisha Wiesel


Shlomo Elisha Wiesel (born June 6, 1972) is an American businessman and hedge fund manager. He worked for Goldman Sachs for 25 years, serving as its chief information officer for three years, until 2019. He is the only child of Holocaust survivor, author, professor, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel.

Early and personal life

Shlomo Elisha Wiesel was born in 1972. He was named Shlomo Elisha, after his paternal grandfather, Shlomo, who died at age 50 after a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp. At his bris, the rabbi said: "A name has returned."

His father, Elie Wiesel, was a Holocaust survivor, author, professor, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient of Hungarian Jewish and Romanian Jewish descent, whose hometown was Sighet, Romania. His mother, Marion Erster Rose Wiesel, is a Holocaust survivor born in Vienna, Austria, of Austrian Jewish descent, who came to the United States shortly after World War II with her family, with the help of HIAS, then known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. She became a social justice activist and a translator. His paternal grandmother and his aunt were killed in the gas chambers in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He was raised on the Upper West Side and Upper East Side in Manhattan in New York City, attending Modern Orthodox yeshiva Ramaz on the Upper East Side, and suburban New Jersey. When he was six years old, Wiesel and his family lived in Israel for a few months. His parents spoke French at home. As a teenager, he moved from computer programming of computer games to electric guitar, interested in heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden and Metallica, but also in the punk band The Ramones.

Wiesel then attended Yale University, graduating with a B.S. in computer science in 1994. At one point in his freshman year, he sported a purple mohawk haircut. After graduating from Yale, he spent a few months doing basic military training in Israel.

Wiesel and his wife Lynn Bartner-Wiesel are parents to two children.

Career

Wiesel joined the J. Aron commodities division of Goldman Sachs in 1994, after the head of J. Aron strats (the code-writers whose computer models and algorithms power the firm's trading desks) convinced him to give up his initial preference of working in the video game industry. At the time, technology was in its earliest days in banking. At Goldman he worked for Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn, who ended up leading the firm.

He became a managing director in 2002, and a partner in 2004. Wiesel later served as the chief risk officer of its securities division (which houses Goldman's technology-intensive trading business), and global head of its securities division desk strategists.

In January 2017, he succeeded R. Martin Chavez as Goldman's chief information officer.

In December 2019, Wiesel left Goldman Sachs after a 25-year career at the firm. He volunteered on Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign. He also began an archive of his father's writings.

In November 2020, Wiesel joined Israeli Tel Aviv-based fintech start-up vendor management firm entrio (formerly, The Floor), as chairman of its board of directors.

In March 2023, financial digital platform and enterprise solutions provider FactSet appointed Wiesel to its board of directors.

Philanthropy

Wiesel organized fundraisers for Good Shepherd Services, a Brooklyn-based after-school program charity that provides support for at-risk youths and their families, at Goldman beginning in 2013. He also became well known for organizing the popular all-night Midnight Madness problem-solving scavenger hunt throughout New York City, popular among Wall Street professionals. It has raised millions of dollars for charitable non-profits.

Political activity

At a November 30, 2016, event at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Wiesel spoke of the need to protect the LGBT community and Israel, which he said was "treated as the world villain simply for making sure that Jews will never again be without a home," and criticized president-elect Donald Trump's policies that dismissed Syrian refugees, Muslims, undocumented immigrants, women, and African Americans. At another event held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on January 29, 2017, he suggested that protesting against Executive Order 13769 ("Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States") was part of his father's legacy.

In April 2017, in a speech to the March of the Living program at Auschwitz for Holocaust Remembrance Day, he said that the United States and European countries had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, because many in those countries had turned away Syrian refugees fleeing chemical warfare.

Wiesel was, as of 2020, a board member of the progressive Zionist organization Zioness.

References

External links

  • Elisha Wiesel (June 8, 2017). "Lessons from my Father," Jewish Week.
  • "A conversation between Elisha Wiesel, Chief Information Officer, Goldman Sachs and David Gurlé," Symphony Innovate 2017, October 10, 2017 (video).
  • Elisha Wiesel (November 5, 2017). "Answering the Call of My Father, Elie Wiesel" (opinion)," Algemeiner.
  • Elisha Wiesel (October 29, 2018). "How to Respond to the Unspeakable Tragedy in Pittsburgh" (opinion)," Algemeiner.
  • Elisha Wiesel (May 6, 2019). "After Poway, We Must Unite and Stop the Hatred (opinion)," Algemeiner.
  • Elisha Wiesel (November 10, 2019). "Scrapping the ‘Dreamers’ programme should be ruled unlawful (opinion)," Financial Times.
  • "Transforming Moments with Elisha Wiesel and Dr. Eva Fogelman", Museum of Jewish Heritage, October 13, 2020 (video).
  • Elisha Wiesel (November 9, 2020). "My father Elie Wiesel is invoked daily. So why are we so far from his legacy?", Forward.
  • "Elisha Wiesel on Spreading Goodness," The David Suissa Podcast, January 22, 2021 (audio).

Text submitted to CC-BY-SA license. Source: Elisha Wiesel by Wikipedia (Historical)



 

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