There’s not much I liked about school. Classes bored me; teachers harassed me (for handing in my homework late) and the cafeteria food upset my stomach. So when Scarsdale High School announced that I didn't have to go to school for the last five weeks of my senior year if I could just find a company that would allow me to work for it–and that I'd still graduate–I thought this school thing may not be so bad after all. Senior Options [WISE] turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I managed to sneak my way into The New York Times as the assistant to the assistant of Stuart Elliot, the legendary advertising columnist.

The plan was for me to do a bit of stapling and some photocopying. For an eighteen-year old kid, it was a dream just to be in the building. At the time, I had no intention to put two words together, let alone a sentence. Of course, as you would expect from any overachieving high school brat from Scarsdale, by my third week on the job I had written my first article for The Times. They asked me to stick around for the summer and the rest is history: My mother can now brag that I was the youngest writer for the paper, ever... [Fifteen] years later I write for The Times, as chief mergers and acquisitions editor, have published my first book [Too Big To Fail], and have loved every minute of it. Since my Senior Options [WISE] program in 1995, I have written over one-thousand articles, including dozens of front page stories; met with heads of state and corporate titans; traveled around the world on assignment; appeared on countless television programs, and lectured at some of the nation’s premier universities. And to think what would have become of me if I had been stuck in school.