Table of Contents
- Jaime Blaustein is a former junior expenditure banker at Credit score Suisse.
- He is in prolonged-term recovery from substance use and has mentored a lot of many others in recovery, too.
- He just lately left banking and is embarking on a new journey: founding his have treatment middle.
1 night time through spring break in 2009, Jaime Blaustein was driving erratically by means of a faculty zone in his hometown of North Caldwell, New Jersey.
The law enforcement pulled him above. In his vehicle, they discovered a stash of opiates, benzodiazepines, ecstasy, and cannabis.
That was the third time out of 5 that Blaustein was arrested. The College of Michigan undergrad, who was 19 at the time, was billed with possession of several managed substances, he mentioned, though the charges had been finally dropped.
He was set on probation for a 12 months, his driver’s license was suspended, and he was subjected to fines. But that incident was the idea of the iceberg.
From ages 16 to 24, Blaustein utilised medicines. In an interview with Insider, Blaustein, now 32, estimated that he expended up to $300 a working day on drugs in the course of the direst times of his habit. Pawning every thing from his operate laptop to prized relatives jewels assisted him protect the price.
Following faculty, he struggled to maintain on to wealth-administration work at companies like Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, the latter of which he misplaced in a make a difference of months. In his closet, rows of white button-front shirts marred by bloodstains the place the fabric experienced touched his pores and skin instructed the tale of all the periods he’d stepped into the toilet to inject heroin at work.
On Christmas Day in 2013, throughout his seventh household-cure continue to be, Blaustein at last began his recovery. Several several years afterwards, he attained an MBA at Duke University, then joined Credit history Suisse as an financial commitment-banking affiliate based in New York in 2018.
Now he is focusing on supporting other folks accomplish recovery, way too
In January, Ben Brafman, the founder and former CEO of Destination Hope — a substance-use remedy center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the place Blaustein experienced when been a patient — approached the young banker with a organization chance.
He invited Blaustein to sign up for him in founding a 20-bed facility, the Sylvia Brafman Mental Well being Center, in the nearby city of Tamarac, which the pair are set to open in August.
Their program will consist of a
telehealth
treatment method presenting for young Wall Street financiers to receive both personal and team counseling classes.
The banking way of life normally takes a toll, Blaustein said. “You can find most unquestionably an underserved inhabitants of folks on Wall Road who have to have mental-health care, and in the context of what our working day-to-day work involves,” he mentioned.
“You eliminate management of your lifetime” on the job, he included. “You might be now at the mercy of the routine of promotions and MDs.”
Although giving up his banking job 6 months before he would have been promoted to vice president was challenging, his expertise was invaluable while he navigated the capital-elevating process this spring, simultaneously operating from household and juggling his banking tasks, Blaustein explained.
He was capable to elevate much more than $1 million in funding from 4 outdoors buyers on a $5 million valuation and has assembled a workforce of about 15 industry experts, which include a healthcare director, counselors, and nurses.
Blaustein’s mentees are next in his footsteps
In 2010, Blaustein survived a life-threatening ordeal.
His mother observed him and his father, who also experienced an habit, unconscious on a couch upcoming to every single other in a rented area in a household in New Jersey. They had overdosed on OxyContin and Xanax.
They ended up hospitalized and lived by way of the overdose. But that was the very last time Blaustein noticed his dad in particular person he died a calendar year later on.
Blaustein’s arrive a lengthy way considering the fact that then, and he’s centered on supporting many others by their restoration journeys and 12-move packages.
Shaun Champaneria, 28, a former administration guide, is one particular of Blaustein’s mentees.
Champaneria will embark on a two-calendar year MBA program at Emory’s Goizueta Faculty of Enterprise this summer time and is hoping to pursue a banking vocation.
Champaneria claimed Blaustein “has been unbelievably encouraging and has assisted when I have experienced times of self-doubt,” like when he took the GMAT. “He is in the business enterprise for the purpose of not only encouraging people today but providing them the possibility that he’s had.”