Talk about big shoes to fill. When Michael Bloomberg took his seat as the newly elected mayor of New York City earlier this month, he found himself filling a pair of shoes big enough to fit a professional basketball player. Not only had former mayor Rudolph Giuliani spent the past eight years as the mayor of New York, but since the Sept. 11 attacks, Giuliani has become a little larger than life.
Trailing behind the man recently named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Bloomberg will have to work hard to build the kind of relationship with New York that Giuliani has cultivated. But Bloomberg isn't the type to sit back and soak up his success. The self-made billionaire fought his way to the top from humble beginnings in a little city called Medford, MA, and hasn't seemed to have forgotten the importance of getting his hands dirty.
Bloomberg's life has been an embodiment of a rags-to-riches success story. Born in Brookline, MA, his parents moved to Medford when he was four. His father, who worked six days a week during Bloomberg's childhood, never earned more than $6,000 a year.
Now a big-city man, Bloomberg still remembers his childhood home fondly. He once wrote, "If I screw it up, you can't blame my parents, you can't blame the city, or the school system. It was a great place to grow up."
Bloomberg involved himself with various town activities during his childhood. When he was 12 years old, Bloomberg was the youngest Eagle Scout the city had ever seen. During his time at Medford High School, Bloomberg was on the Debate Team and president of the Slide Rule Club - a club that studied higher mathematics and the proper use of the slide rule.
After graduating high school in 1960, Bloomberg worked his way through an undergraduate career at Johns Hopkins University, earning an engineering degree in 1964. When he was a senior at the university, Bloomberg's father, a bookkeeper at a local dairy, passed away. His mother Charlotte still lives in the Medford home in which Bloomberg was raised.
The Salomon Brothers hired Bloomberg fresh out of Harvard Business School to work on Wall Street, where he started as a processing clerk. By 1972, he became a partner in the firm and handled all of Salomon Brothers' most important cases before he was fired in 1981 when the firm was sold. From his severance with the company came a $10 million pay-out with which Bloomberg began building an empire that now stands as one of the most powerful organizations in the business world. Today, Bloomberg L.P. is a major global financial information company that owns a wire service and multiple television and radio stations.
Bloomberg's career seems to follow a tried-and-true maxim: If you want something done, you have to do it yourself. Tending to rely on his own proven abilities, Bloomberg does not typically utilize significant outside help in his professional dealings. In August 2000, Bloomberg played a central role in capturing two computer hackers from Kazakhstan who attempted to extort $200,000 from his company. Bloomberg met the men in London, convincing them that he was going to comply with their monetary demands. He was accompanied by two London Metropolitan police officers, one posing as a company executive and one as a translator. When the men repeated their demands in the presence of the police officers, they were arrested.
Last March, Bloomberg stepped down as the chairman of the board of Bloomberg L.P. to focus more on his race for the mayoral seat, but he remains the company's chief executive officer.
Until last year, Bloomberg was registered as a Democrat, but switched to Republican in his campaign. Bloomberg admitted that he switched parties solely to avoid the crowded Democratic primary that he didn't think he could win. The primary included longtime politician Mark Green, whom Bloomberg beat in the election by three percentage points, despite the fact that Democrats outnumber republicans 5:1 in New York.
For senior Mike Feldman, a Manhattan resident, Bloomberg's party switch was a matter of good strategy. "These parties are overrated," he said. "If switching parties was what he needed to do to get elected, it was a good choice."
Feldman cited two of Bloomberg's promises - his vow to ride public transportation every day to the office and his decision not to reside in Gracie Mansion - as qualities that set him apart from former mayors, along with the fact that Bloomberg's campaign was self-fueled. According to a Nov. 14 Boston Globe article, Bloomberg spent $50 million of his own money on the campaign.
Bloomberg's net worth - although he has been private about his own finances - is estimated at $4 billion, a far cry from his days of selling wreaths door-to-door to pay for Boy Scout camp.
Bloomberg is generous in his charitable donations with those billions of dollars. He donates funds to education, arts, and Jewish charities, as well as public workers including firefighters and police officers. Last January, Bloomberg gave $1 million to the Medford Temple Shalom, where his 93 year old mother is the co-president. When it reopens with its renovations, it will be renamed the William and Charlotte Bloomberg Community Center.
And since graduating from Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg has donated over $50 million to the school. The money came with the stipulation that $30 million be used for student financial aid, providing students opportunities that their backgrounds may not have previously afforded - for students, no doubt, in similar situations as Bloomberg's.
