Ed Hajim | On The Road Less Traveled

The Acclaimed Series From Ed Hajim

On The Road Less
Traveled

At the age of 3, a boy is kidnapped by his father, driven cross-country, told his mother had died, and was left for years in an orphanage...

Letters between Ed and his father

At the age of 3, Ed Hajim is kidnapped by his father, driven cross-country, and told his mother had died. He presses his face against the car window, watches the miles pass and wonders where life will take him.

Where you’d least expect.

In a memoir filled with human drama, wisdom and timeless life lessons, Ed Hajim tells his improbable story of how he bounced from foster homes to orphanages, in a daily struggle to survive, to living the American dream as an accomplished Wall Street executive and model family man with great moral fiber and the means to give back to a world that seemed intent on rejecting him.

It’s a powerful story touched with family trauma, deprivation, and adversity balanced by a life of hard work and philanthropy.

“While his childhood travails of loneliness, isolation, and poverty would have broken most people, Ed channeled his survival instincts and conquered his inner demons to become a loving family man and a beloved leader of people,” says Raj Echambadi, Dunton family dean at D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University.

Dunton Family Dean Raj Echambadi is talking to Ed Hajim as part of the D’Amore-McKim Lessons in Leadership video series.

Throughout his career, Hajim was guided by his instincts to know when a situation had run its course. “Sometimes it’s better to sever ties and leave on your own, even if the next step is unknown.”

“That’s often the road less traveled, but it’s so worth the journey. ”The “unknown” also played a major part in Ed’s personal life, when a long-kept secret he couldn’t possibly have imagined was revealed."

At a dedication ceremony with President Joel Seligman and family (2009)

Joel Seligman, president emeritus of the University of Rochester, says, “Ed Hajim’s On the Road Less Traveled does full justice to a remarkable life lived by a remarkable man. You will learn much about why one man who began with nothing achieved so much and did so much for so many.”