Ed
was born in New York City and at age three moved 55 miles up the mighty Hudson
River to Cornwall-on-Hudson (NY) in one of the most beautiful natural settings
on this planet, in the shadow of the majestic Storm King Mountain, ground zero
for both the environmental movement in the U.S. and Ed's love of and respect
for nature. Prior to college, Ed was educated in parochial schools, including
two years in a Franciscan minor seminary. Growing up, as with most boys those
days, he was in the Boy Scouts, YMCA, and an altar boy.
After
receiving a B.A. in Economics at Fordham University in New York, Ed
went on to receive an M.B.A. in Finance at the Columbia Business
School and, after the Navy, his J.D. degree at George Washington
University. Later, he attended the Harvard Business School's Advanced
Management Program. Ed is fluent in Russian and also
studied German, French and other languages.
Ed
jump-started his management career early at the New York Telephone
Company (then part of AT&T) as a business office supervisor while in
college. In graduate school, he interned at IBM's corporate headquarters
in Armonk where he was considered a pioneer in the application of computer
systems to corporate planning.
While
attending the Navy's Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode
Island, Ed was the subject of a bidding war between the Naval Security
Group (Cryptology) and Admiral Rickover's nuclear submarine program, and the
former won. He loyally served his country for two years in Washington, D.C.,
and for several years in the Navy Reserve, developing leading-edge computerized
management systems for the Navy, after which he received an honorable discharge
as a Lieutenant.
At
age 25, after his Naval service Ed was recruited by OMB (U.S. Office of
Management and Budget) as a budget examiner, a position federal employees
aspire to at mid-career, and classified by OPM (Office of Personnel Management)
as a mid-level operations research analyst, a classification difficult to
obtain. Instead of OMB, Ed opted to work at OPIC (Overseas Private
Investment Corporation) as a Political Risk Insurance Officer and Director
of Management and Information Systems where he continued to apply his expertise
in advanced computerized management systems for three years.
While
at OPIC, Ed was recruited by the Federal Reserve Board and served,
successively, as Chief, Program Analysis and Budgets; Assistant Controller;
Assistant Secretary; Assistant Staff Director for Management; and Assistant
Director, Information Technology. He was appointed to the official
staff of the Fed at age 32, the fourth youngest in Federal Reserve history. Ed
was singularly responsible for the establishment of the Federal Reserve Board’s
Office of Inspector General as well as an interim inspector general function at
the Resolution Trust Corporation Oversight Board, where he served for one year
on loan from the Fed.
In
1999, Ed was recruited by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and
Russian Central Bank to serve as Secretary to the Committee on Banking
Reform and Reconstruction of the Russian Federation in Moscow. He gave up
the post in October 2000, writing only, "I have other
projects and priorities." Looking back from 2022, smart move, very smart move.
Ed is an active member of the D.C. Bar, including the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since he was 28, Ed has been the proud guardian of six magnificent German shepherd dogs, Montag, Sonntag and Kessie, Leben and Erde, and currently Donner. What absolute joy his dogs have brought to him. Most people do not know Ed without his dogs.
A
few lesser-known facts about Ed include:
•
Since his retirement, Ed, a vegan, has devoted a significant amount of
his time to animal rights/welfare causes.
•
Ed is best known these days for his unprecedented long road camping expeditions
in his Land Rover Defender with his beloved German shepherd dogs across North
America, from sea to shining sea to shining sea, the first of which was
featured in two cover stories (2002 and 2010) of the National Geographic. After the first article appeared, the wheelchair business for dogs exploded across the world.
•
Ed has served on his Washington, DC, condominium board for 20 terms, mostly as president. Whenever an article appears in the Washington Post on
issues in condominiums, Ed's letters to the editor are usually the ones
published.
•
While at Fordham, Ed played rugby and rowed crew. Ed was a member of the
freshman crew that was considered the best in the country at the time.
• In 1986, Ed developed a method for the rapid mental computation of any one missing component of a date, which has been adopted by WikiHow as the best in the world.
Oh,
in Ed's junior year at Fordham, Donald Trump was there as a
freshman. In the spring, the new women's college on campus took
a poll of the 2000 men on campus, and Ed was elected the
"sexiest guy on campus," without knowing why or caring. But that means that Ed, not Biden, was
the first person to beat Trump in an election.
