Skidmore College - Scope Magazine Fall 2018

T he circuitous route often has the richest scenery. Stephen Shapiro ’75 began his journey on the cement of Forest Hills, Queens. Now he is immersed in the verdant AdirondackMountains, tending to pets and making hard choices: hike, climb, swim, garden, research 18th-century Americans like Sir William Johnson and Chief Joseph Brant, or can pears? Detours along the way have offered kaleidoscopic vantage points, from his jobs as a taxi driver, teacher, book merchant, sailing instructor, cook, researcher, Wall Street whiz and full-time student in Skidmore’s University Without Walls. At community college, where Shapiro got serious about biology, a professor suggested Skidmore, which offered a new science center and electron microscope. He approached Skidmore’s biology department to ask for access, but “was politely declined,” he recalls. Undaunted, he enrolled in UWW and designed his own degree, which included a lot of lab time. With a B.A. in biology soon in hand, he scored a teaching gig in the Adirondack village of Lake Luzerne. But it was temporary, and he later landed full time at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons as a research assistant. A perk of the Columbia job was graduate education at minimal cost, and Shapiro’s plan was to earn a Ph.D. But after getting mugged, he de- cided Wall Street might be a safer workplace. “I was a scientist, an ideal- ist,” he says, “but I was also becoming afraid to go to work and school. A week later, I was a clerk in the lowest position in a trading room.” Though he “knew nothing about finance,” he adapted quickly. “The advantage of studying history, math, physics, biology, chemistry, philoso- phy, language and the arts is when you encounter unanticipated opportu- nity, value or adversity, you understand it as part of a big picture,” he says. In the Wild West atmosphere of 1980s Wall Street, “the crash of ’87 highlighted the need for regulatory and technical improvement, if not complete overhaul. The next dozen years brought dizzying changes that required constant focus.” For some aspects of equity trading, it takes years “to attain minimal competence without getting fired, sued or worse,” according to Shapiro. “You were expected to step up, step in and orient almost instantly.” He had to adapt again when traders began using fully automated programs operating at the speed of light. Programmers became “the most important links in the chain of trading. All it took was a network failure and, instead of suffering just a serious loss, a firm could suddenly be out of business.” That’s when he thought: “A good time to retire.” So he and his wife relocated upstate, not far north of Saratoga, where he built a yoga studio and planted a garden. Shapiro is also the very proud father of Carolyn, a 2015 Skidmore graduate, who detoured from thoughts of law school to take a job manag- ing Saratoga’s venerable Caffè Lena and to performmusic. Flexibility runs in the family? Serving as the Class of ’75 fund chair helps Shapiro maintain his college ties. “I like the direction Skidmore has grown, both at home and abroad,” he says. “Financial aid has increased and helped attract more economically diverse students. A good liberal arts education shouldn’t be only for the wealthy.” —Helen S. Edelman ’74 Retired from an eclectic career, Steve Shapiro ’75 now enjoys the outdoors and voracious reading. Christopher Massa Teacher, trader, lifelong learner P A S S I O N M A S H U P 20 SCOPE FALL 2018