Philanthropist and former Wall Street banker visits Loop to share life lessons
Philanthropist and former Wall Street banker visits Loop to share life lessons
Thirty Loopers had the opportunity to meet Anthony Haden West, a former banker that many years ago decided to leave corporate life and ever since has been working with impact ventures. Anthony talked about his formative years, why he chose to trade a very lucrative and successful career for a philanthropic path, and what he’s learned so far.

In a conversation marked by many questions from the audience, Anthony spoke about the importance of seeing money as a tool instead of as of value by itself; and how he now takes that health is the relationships you build through life. He then encouraged Loopers to consider success as being equivalent to happiness, not as money.

Anthony also mentioned his own experience with coding: having learned it when he was 11 years old, he thinks that developing that skill set outside of school turned out to be extremely helpful later in his life. Excelling at logical reasoning and mathematics was a fundamental factor for him. At some point, he even described himself jokingly as an “early self-Looper”. He may have been closer to the truth there than one might think: not only he learned programming at an early age, but his concern with benefiting others makes him a true Looper.
Overall, it was a great opportunity for the Loopers to discuss what success is really like, the various paths to being happy and different courses of action when it comes to contributing to your community.
