Rafael J. Rivera-Viruet

I came from a very poor upbringing, and we could not afford to go to a college where there was major tuition. In those days, based on your averages in high school, you were able to get into a CCNY with no major tuition fees, and that was wonderful. It's a shame that that's no longer around, but it helped a lot of other people from lower-income families to get a good education. I got the best education in the world from CCNY. I did start my college career on the main campus uptown. They called it the 137th Street. After a while I realized that I was not going in the right direction, so I decided to go into the business side of it, and then moved down to Baruch where I finally got my degree. I wanted to be a teacher. I started to read a magazine in the library that I had never seen before. It was called Fortune Magazine. They had a survey of the 50 professions in America at that time and I was looking for educators and teachers and I looked and looked and I finally found it down in 47. I went up to the top five and then in the top five, finance was in there and I was always good at mathematics. My mom had a small restaurant and I used to keep the books. That's why I switched down. I spent very little time on campus because I was always working, and when I went down to Baruch, it was a wonderful experience because I learned so much about the business world and how to make things happen by thinking out of the box.