The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 162

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Ron Dembo
friend of mine was completing the new building for the Fields
Institute, and John invited me over.
I told him of my experience in Toronto, having come from
Yale via Goldman Sachs. People used to ask me, “Why are
you in Toronto doing Financial Engineering? Should you
not be in New York and London? But after a few years of
training Financial Engineers and building a prestigious risk
management function, the tone had changed. We noodled on
this and asked, “Why don’t we start a Financial Engineering
Seminar at Fields and make it one of the best in the world?”
Ron Dembo and John Mighton at the Fields Institute, 2003.
We started it and invited top-notch people to come to
Toronto to give seminars. John Chadam was incredibly
supportive, and without his help, this would not have
happened. The seminar quickly grew to overflowing in Fields’