All Learning Comes to Use
This article in the NYT's is so true, all learning does come to use. Even when you think this will definitely not be of help.
Published: October 31, 2009
I GREW up in Brooklyn, one of four children. My father was a project manager for an advertising agency. We probably had less money than I realized. I didn’t know that my mother waited until Friday to go food shopping because that’s when my father could give her money.
ELLEN ZIMILES
Chief executive, Daylight Forensic and Advisory, Manhattan
AGE 49
ALWAYS WITH HER BlackBerry and reading glasses
RECENTLY READ ‘Power Ambition Glory’ by Steve Forbes and John Prevas
When I was about 7, my father taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten about standing up for yourself. When we were taking a walk during the High Holy Days, six or seven teenagers on a corner started yelling ethnic slurs. My father walked up to the group and calmly asked if they had a problem. He defused the situation in a few seconds.
After majoring in speech pathology and audiology as an undergraduate, I got a law degree and worked at a New York law firm. I worked on a case with a lawyer who had been assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York. He advised me to apply there, which was the best career advice I’ve ever received. Rudy Giuliani was my first boss there, and Mary Jo White was my last.
I spent five years in the civil division and five in the criminal division. In that time, I became chief of the forfeiture unit. Our job was to find property involved in criminal activity, or other proceeds from crime, and return it to victims or turn it over to the government. I worked on many international money laundering cases and financial frauds.
My favorite case, however, involved a single-room occupancy New York hotel that housed low-income or destitute New Yorkers and the mentally and physically ill. The building had become a supermarket for crack. Outsiders would use empty rooms for drug transactions. We took over the building and sold it to a nonprofit housing organization that reduced the number of rooms but provided bathrooms and cooking facilities and doubled the room size. The group provided social services as well and drastically improved the quality of life for residents. I return to the hotel once a year just to see what’s happening.
In 1997, I left and became a consultant for the accounting firm KPMG for 10 years, working on money laundering investigations and compliance projects. Three years ago, I co-founded Daylight Forensic with Joe Spinelli, a KPMG colleague who had been an F.B.I. agent and the first inspector general for New York State.
Our clients include governments, financial institutions and telecommunications, pharmaceutical, health care and manufacturing companies. We work on everything from investigations of possible public corruption in Eastern Europe, money laundering in Latin America and accounting fraud in Asia, to mortgage-backed securities investigations in the United States.
My younger child, Daniel, 13, was born with autism. We knew when he was 2. Although I’ve always worked, my focus was trying to figure out how to help my son. My background in speech pathology turned out to be useful. I realized that nothing you learn in life is for naught — everything will serve you at some point. You just don’t know when.
Several years ago, I decided that if I wanted my son to get a job someday, I had to put my money where my mouth is. Two people with autism now work at our firm. I would tell other executives that hiring people with autism adds exponentially to a company’s culture. You get back more than you give. We recruited these workers through the YAI Network.
Last year, my husband and I bought a bookstore in Maplewood, N.J., where we live, and renamed it Words. It’s a mainstream bookstore, but we also wanted a place where families with special-needs children would feel comfortable. We had YAI give our staff sensitivity training about people with special needs, and we train people with autism on how to work in a bookstore.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen.
Published: October 31, 2009
I GREW up in Brooklyn, one of four children. My father was a project manager for an advertising agency. We probably had less money than I realized. I didn’t know that my mother waited until Friday to go food shopping because that’s when my father could give her money.
ELLEN ZIMILES
Chief executive, Daylight Forensic and Advisory, Manhattan
AGE 49
ALWAYS WITH HER BlackBerry and reading glasses
RECENTLY READ ‘Power Ambition Glory’ by Steve Forbes and John Prevas
When I was about 7, my father taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten about standing up for yourself. When we were taking a walk during the High Holy Days, six or seven teenagers on a corner started yelling ethnic slurs. My father walked up to the group and calmly asked if they had a problem. He defused the situation in a few seconds.
After majoring in speech pathology and audiology as an undergraduate, I got a law degree and worked at a New York law firm. I worked on a case with a lawyer who had been assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York. He advised me to apply there, which was the best career advice I’ve ever received. Rudy Giuliani was my first boss there, and Mary Jo White was my last.
I spent five years in the civil division and five in the criminal division. In that time, I became chief of the forfeiture unit. Our job was to find property involved in criminal activity, or other proceeds from crime, and return it to victims or turn it over to the government. I worked on many international money laundering cases and financial frauds.
My favorite case, however, involved a single-room occupancy New York hotel that housed low-income or destitute New Yorkers and the mentally and physically ill. The building had become a supermarket for crack. Outsiders would use empty rooms for drug transactions. We took over the building and sold it to a nonprofit housing organization that reduced the number of rooms but provided bathrooms and cooking facilities and doubled the room size. The group provided social services as well and drastically improved the quality of life for residents. I return to the hotel once a year just to see what’s happening.
In 1997, I left and became a consultant for the accounting firm KPMG for 10 years, working on money laundering investigations and compliance projects. Three years ago, I co-founded Daylight Forensic with Joe Spinelli, a KPMG colleague who had been an F.B.I. agent and the first inspector general for New York State.
Our clients include governments, financial institutions and telecommunications, pharmaceutical, health care and manufacturing companies. We work on everything from investigations of possible public corruption in Eastern Europe, money laundering in Latin America and accounting fraud in Asia, to mortgage-backed securities investigations in the United States.
My younger child, Daniel, 13, was born with autism. We knew when he was 2. Although I’ve always worked, my focus was trying to figure out how to help my son. My background in speech pathology turned out to be useful. I realized that nothing you learn in life is for naught — everything will serve you at some point. You just don’t know when.
Several years ago, I decided that if I wanted my son to get a job someday, I had to put my money where my mouth is. Two people with autism now work at our firm. I would tell other executives that hiring people with autism adds exponentially to a company’s culture. You get back more than you give. We recruited these workers through the YAI Network.
Last year, my husband and I bought a bookstore in Maplewood, N.J., where we live, and renamed it Words. It’s a mainstream bookstore, but we also wanted a place where families with special-needs children would feel comfortable. We had YAI give our staff sensitivity training about people with special needs, and we train people with autism on how to work in a bookstore.
As told to Patricia R. Olsen.
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