Elisha's mother, Marion Wiesel, was a Holocaust survivor born in Vienna, Austria, of Austrian Jewish descent, who came to the United States shortly after World War II with her family, with the help of HIAS, then known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.[5][2]
Wiesel then attended Yale University, graduating with a B.S. in computer science in 1994.[7][4] After graduating from Yale, he spent a few months doing basic military training in Israel.[7]
In 2002, at the age of 30, he became a managing director, and a partner in 2004.[13][14] Wiesel later served as the chief risk officer of its securities division (which houses Goldman's technology-intensive trading business), and global head of its securities division desk strategists.[1][3][15]
In January 2017, when Wiesel was 44 years old, he succeeded R. Martin Chavez as Goldman's chief information officer, overseeing Engineering (the firm's Technology Division and global strategists groups).[8][16][9] Wiesel became the highest-ranked of 9,000 Goldman engineers, who accounted for 25% of the firm's total employees.[10]
Later career
In December 2019, Wiesel left Goldman Sachs after a 25-year career at the firm.[1][3][4] He volunteered on Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign and also began an archive of his father's writings.[2] In November 2020 Wiesel joined Israeli Tel Aviv-based fintechstart-up vendor management firm entrio (formerly, The Floor), as chairman of its board of directors.[17][18][19][20] In March 2023, financial digital platform and enterprise solutions provider FactSet appointed Wiesel to its board of directors.[21]
In May 2023, Wiesel and quantitative investment firm AQR Capital Management alumnus Brian Hurst launched and began co-running the Niche Plus multimanager hedge fund, the first fund of ClearAlpha Technologies, where he is a founding partner and CRO.[22][23][24] The firm launched with commitments of several hundred million dollars from AQR founder Cliff Asness, Stable Asset Management, and other institutional investors.[23][24]
Philanthropy
Wiesel organized fundraisers and has served as a board member for Good Shepherd Services, a Brooklyn-based after-school program charity that provides support for at-risk youths and their families, at Goldman beginning in 2013.[25][1][26]
In January 2017, he suggested that protesting against Executive Order 13769 ("Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States") was part of his father's legacy.[30]
As of 2020, Wiesel was a board member of the organization Zioness, founded by Amanda Berman.[2][34] Since November 2023, Wiesel has been a vocal defender of Israel; in a speech at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, he said that the IDF seeks to avoid civilian casualties.[35] He has stated that the accusation of Israel being genocidal in Gaza was blood libel, and that campus protests were "obviously antisemitic".[36] Wiesel along with a group of other prominent Jews sent a letter to Stephen Colbert demanding that he intensely question the NYC Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani on his views of Israel when he would appear on his show in 2025.[37]
Personal life
Wiesel and his wife Lynn Bartner-Wiesel have two children.[7][4]
