I am so thrilled to have received an offer from McKinsey’s Pittsburgh office on Friday. My close friends and family have been congratulating me as if I did this alone. What I would like to bring attention to and share gratitude for is the sacrifices made by other people10, 20, and even 60 years ago that put me in the position to succeed.
On Friday- at 7:38 pm- Shabbat dinner had already started but I left my phone on loud because McKinsey is known for calling you with results on the day of your interview. When an unknown 412 number popped up, my heart sank and I answered the phone. Jason, one of McKinsey’s partners, shared some kind words and gave me the good news. I immediately texted my family and my mom called me screaming. I could hear tears in her eyes when she said “I knew you could do this. It wasn’t always easy for you. I am so so proud of you.” When she said “it wasn’t always easy” she means the misery on my face at 8 years old when she would ask me to read the same Dr. Sues book that my 6-year-old sister was breezing through and I could hardly make out the sounds without skipping a line or trying to give up. She never let me give up. My mom remembers the tough decision she had to make when the private Jewish day school my siblings and I attended did not renew my contract because they did not want to put the time and energy into making sure her dyslexic son would learn to read at a 3rd-grade reading level. My mom decided to not only move me to a new school but our whole family to a new house and neighborhood so that I could get the support I needed in school. Lastly, despite my protest and tears, my mom wisely decided to have me repeat the third grade which allowed me to finally catch up to my peers. Before I had recognition from Penn State’s newspaper, a letter of recommendation from President Barron, or a job at McKinsey, the only thing I had going for me was my Mom, Dad, and a reading tutor who refused to let dyslexia hinder their son’s ability to reach his potential. My first impression on McKinsey’s partners- and maybe most people in my life today- is the story creating the Keyper, donating 102K masks during covid, or winning $25k in a pitch competition. To them, perhaps landing this job is no stretch of the imagination. But my mom remembers a boy that felt so dumb in school because reading did not come easy- and neither did this job.
On Saturday, I called my mom’s dad- Papa Marty. I told him my starting salary and he said, “Ezra, I am so so proud of you.” To my grandpa, who went years not knowing whether food would be on the table, $90,000 means security, respect, and above all independence. He grew up in depression-era Brooklyn with immigrant parents that hardly spoke English and worked as peddlers on the lower east side of Manhatten. Papa Marty was in the same high school as Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and a few years after them, Bernie Sanders. He waited tables to pay his way through a pre-med program at NYU and an orthodontics school at Indiana University. In Indiana, my Grandmother worked as a substitute teacher so that they could make ends meet. Her students asked if they could feel her “Jew horns” after one class. By the age of 22, Papa Marty was paying for his father and mother’s food and rent. He spent his 30’s and 40’s growing practice in Queens and working 80 hour weeks so that he could retire with enough money to put all his 13 grandkids through college. He still takes home a handful of free mints from every restaurant we go to because a part of him is still conditioned to survive the great depression.
Later in the day, I called my Babushka Inna and told her that I will be moving back to Pittsburgh next year. She said, “Ezra, I am so happy to hear that.” To her, Pittsburgh is not just a charming city with midwestern character and an undefeated football team. Pittsburgh is the manifestation of our American dream. My Babushka was born in Odesa to a mother and no father because he was shot in the back of the head by the secret police for the crime of being a Jewish man in Ukraine. She spent her childhood in Siberia running as far as she could from the Nazi’s with her sister and mother. After the war, she married my Dedushka and they both became civil engineers in St. Petersburg. Finally, they earned a sense of relative security because of their respected government positions. My Dedhuska managed to not only escape the pogroms of Belarus but also to earn a gold star from the Soviet Union for never receiving bellow an A in all his years of education- from grade school to university. Despite their positions in Russia, my father came home with two black eyes and missing teeth because school bullies saw “Jew” on his government-issued ID. My Babushka made the tough decision to leave the only sense of comfort she had ever earned in Russia so that her son- my Dad- could live a better life in America. They sold everything that they owned- including the gold star- and spent the next 6 months as refugees moving across Europe in the hope that America, Canada, New Zealand, or Isreal would let them in. When Jimmy Carter advanced immigration policy to allow Refuzniks- the Jews who demonstrated civil disobedience in Russia by refusing to work until they were allowed to leave- into America, my bridge designing grandparents decided to move to Pittsburgh, the city of bridges. They were poor at first but they invested all they had into my Dad’s education. In 1980, When my Dad was accepted to Carnegie Mellon University for computer science, they could not afford it. Today, my brother is at CMU studying material science engineering. Yesterday, I said to my Babushka “thank you for making all the sacrifices you made so that I could live in Pittsburgh and accept this job.” God Bless America.
The only reason I was able to refuse to let dyslexia limit my potential was because my Mom refused to see me give up and my Babushka refused to work in conditions that threatened the safety of her family. My offer from McKinsey is the American dream that I get to enjoy because someone else was awake at night working in Brooklyn, Indiana, Belarus, St. Petersberg, and, finally, Pittsburgh.
Don’t say congratulations. Say Mazel Tov because it honors both the faith that my parents and grandparents preserved despite the treat of death and the people who really got me here.
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