How I Journeyed Through the Darkness of Collapse

Shedding the toxic skin of finance to rediscover purpose, humanity, and life itself.

— Strangled by My Own Success

I once sold investment strategies to the Goldman Sachs Partners Fund. For those who know the language of money, that phrase carries weight. A partners fund is not the pension money, not retail investors — it is the partners’ own capital. The so-called smartest money in the world. The due diligence is so ruthless, so merciless, that only a handful of investment pitches ever make it through the crucible to approval. I made it through.

Then I became General Partner in an AIG Fund.

And AIG — back then, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, under Hank Greenberg — was an empire. Insurance as global dominance, wielded not just in numbers but in power. I was there, invited to the tables where Greenberg and Henry Kissinger shared cigars and strategy. I dined in those rooms. I wore the uniform — Armani suit, red power tie, suspenders of Bulls and Bears that were as much a badge of belonging as they were a noose.

I thought I was filling myself — status, power, access to the inner circle of capital. But as I became full of myself, I discovered a hollowing out. The more the world admired my…