What did you do after graduating from Amherst?
After Amherst, I went to Oxford and was writing letters for a summer job in London when I took a break and ran into a tennis client on High Street. Like most tourists in Oxford, he wanted to see a college on the inside and a room, so I invited him up. He saw the letters and suggested I send one to a connection he had at First Boston in London. I had never heard of investment banking at the time. It was a great job and I never looked back.
What does RAINN do?
RAINN is the leading national organization in the area of sexual assault. We do three things. We help victims through different hotlines. We try to educate the public, for example, [with] RAINN Day. I don’t think Amherst participates in RAINN Day, and you guys should. It’s always in early September and helps educate the new freshman and students to the risks and avoidance. So education and outreach is the second thing we do, and the third thing we do is drive national legislative priorities in Washington to help ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.
What made you join RAINN?
I think it’s an Amherst kind of thing. We try to do some not-for-profit things while we’re trying to have our careers, if they’re not the same thing. As a financial person, if you look at the size of the issues out there, this is big. There are about 250,000 sexual assaults a year in just the United States, not to mention places like Africa. [This] is just about the same magnitude as breast cancer, so it’s not a small issue, and it’s frankly a very big issue for college-age women, who are four times more likely to be assaulted than any other age group.
What kind of work do you do at RAINN?
Board members are there for good governance, to provide ideas, and to help with funding. That’s sort of what we do, and to help facilitate things, where contacts are needed. [On the RAINN web site, there is a button] that says, “Get help now.” That took us three years to do. You know how you go on your computer and [web sites like] Amazon say, “Is that you?” We wanted it so that if you went on that button, no one would ever know who you were, sort of reverse engineering all those cookies. There were issues of confidentiality — “What if it’s a kid? What if a 12-year-old is being raped by a stepfather, do I have to report that?” Those rules are state by state. In short, the board members help get things like that done. I connected them with a law firm, where we got them to do all the law work for free. We help with governance, ideas, funding and facilitation.
What’s the relevance of RAINN to Amherst College students?
I think you guys are pretty knowledgeable about this stuff, but as we said, college women are four times more likely to be assaulted. Over 70 percent of assaults are committed by people that are known by the victim, like a date and sometimes involve alcohol.
How can Amherst students access RAINN?
RAINN provides free, 24/7 confidential support through the online hotline at RAINN.org. I would encourage any reader who has an issue to get help; not just forget about it, but to get help.
What are some of your favorite memories of Amherst?
My favorite memories are of the economics faculty. They were very good to me. They approved my thesis, which was a very poor thesis. They came to all my tennis and squash matches and usually actually rooted for me and not the other guy. I was in a fraternity and had a lot fun, but they don’t have those anymore for good reasons. I remember very well the third floor of the library. I’m still the class agent for my class so I get to talk to them every year and beat them up to make a contribution.
Was the food at Val as bad then as it is now?
I think you guys are living in pig heaven. You guys have great food there. I know you don’t think so, but I survived on the peanut butter and jelly and hard-boiled eggs. There was a two-week cycle [and] you only had one choice at any meal. Every second Wednesday was a BLT. There’s not a lot you can do with a piece of bread, bacon, lettuce and tomato. That’s my enduring memory of the one edible thing at Valentine. We had steak every other Saturday night and that was edible. You guys should not complain. Just think about it. One meal. One choice. That was it. And it was always peanut butter and jelly out there, which I partook in.
What made you decide that you wanted to be an economics major?
One tends to gravitate towards things that seem to come more naturally and that you enjoy. I did dabble in other things. I remember very well, second semester of freshman year, I took art history. We had a test and I was like a deer in the headlights. They’re showing me things in a picture and I couldn’t even see it, so I actually had the insight to drop that course at the last possible second. I think I had a D on the first test, so you know, it doesn’t really suggest that you should be an art history major. I don’t think I would have done well or enjoyed that or have been an asset to the world, or an asset to the art history world, whereas in economics, I was doing fine and quite enjoyed it.
Have any Amherst students other than you been involved with RAINN in any way?
We have had interns from Amherst in the winter and summer, and they’ve been great. We’ve loved them, and we’d love to have more. So anyone who has an interest in the issue and would like to learn about it from a legislative point of view or to help us with the outreach to the campuses, we’d welcome that.