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Bob Griffiths: Former Wall Streeter
is Author/Playwright/Speaker

Two weeks shy of his 50^th birthday in 1988, Bob Griffiths, author of Do What You Love for the Rest of Your Life: A Practical Guide to Career Change and Personal Renewal (Ballantine Books, 2001) “gave it all up” when he left his position as a senior vice president of LF Rothschild and Company, the pinnacle of a long career in the financial markets. 

He had gone to work at Citibank as a page boy immediately upon graduating from high school in 1955, while attending the New York College of Music.  After a year of moving between these two worlds, he realized he “had neither the talent or money to continue,” and took the bank up on its offer to pay his tuition at New York University if he pursued a business degree.  For the next seven years, he attended NYU at night graduating with a degree in finance in 1965.  He continued his upward climb at Citibank, leaving in 1973 as a vice president to join Merrill Lynch where he sold and traded government bonds for the next few years.   

“Wall Street had become a den of thieves during the 1980's, and I couldn't stand it,” he said, “I was miserable, despite outward signs of success.”    Although he enjoyed aspects of his work, particularly mentoring and managing salespeople, and was evidently good at what he did, he came to the conclusion that “I wasn’t cut out for the business world.   It was not a natural fit.”  He was drawn to the theater (“my first love”), to playwriting, then acting and directing.  He also considered the possibility of a helping profession such as counseling.  “I knew I couldn’t write and do that also.”  But first he had to get out of what he calls “The Consumption Trap” in his book.  “I had made a lot of money and spent even more, so that after I made my decision to leave Wall Street, it took me five years to pay off all my debts and put some money aside.”  

Since he left Wall Street, Bob Griffiths' professional life in and out of the theater has blossomed.  One of his plays got its first Actors Equity production in 1992, a West Coast premiere in 1995 that garnered “great reviews” from the Los Angeles Times, and an Off Broadway premiere in 1998.  He was commissioned to write three original plays in 1996 (which he also directed), and has gone on to win three national playwriting awards.  Today, he is author, actor, musician, professional speaker and teacher.  He has also discovered “a wonderful spiritual life, which began during an emotional and spiritual crisis 19 years ago,” as he witnessed friends and Wall Street colleagues become devastated by downsizing, burnout, frustration and deteriorating health. 

Bob also mentors emotionally disturbed teenagers.  “It is actually more rewarding than the creative side of me, but I still don't want to do it for money, or on a full-time basis.   We are meant to help others,” he believes, “partly because it’s the right thing to do, and partly as a way of saying thanks for life’s blessings.”  For these insights, he credits “a few older and truly wise people, beginning in my teens and continuing to this day, who have been able to show by the example of their lives what is truly important in life.  We ‘older’ people have a lifetime of experience (and perhaps even some wisdom).  I believe that we are meant to give back.” 

What’s next for this successful career changer?  “To follow the path where it leads.  Perhaps that means living as I am now for the rest of my life - I just don't know.  I work at remaining open to finding the next right thing.  But it will always be something that will help others, I suspect.  Fulfillment and happiness are a by-product of how I live my life; they don't arrive (for me) by spending all day on a golf course.  I'm not supposed to ‘retire’ and vegetate!” 

Getting Started

Visit Bob Griffiths' site at www.dowhatyoulove.com or contact him directly about speaking engagements at bobgriffiths@dowhatyoulove.com