Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Goldman Sachs
Lloyd Blankfein | Ally Award | Center Dinner 2019
On April 18, 2019, Lloyd Blankfein accepted the Ally Award at the annual Center Dinner.
About Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd Blankfein released a memoir titled *Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs* in April 2026 and conducted a series of media interviews to promote the book. In these appearances, he discussed his upbringing in public housing in Brooklyn, his experience as an outsider at Harvard, and his rise to become CEO of Goldman Sachs. On the subject of higher education, Blankfein said he believes young people should not skip college to chase money and fame. He also commented on Harvard, stating that governmental scrutiny caused the university to make "course corrections." In multiple interviews, Blankfein argued that the financial system is accumulating risk that could lead to a future crisis. He used the metaphor of "dry tinder" building up on a forest floor, stating that a long period without a major crisis has led to complacency and the overvaluation of private assets. Blankfein said the next crisis would be harder to contain than 2008 because reforms have spread risk beyond the reach of regulators, though he noted that such distributed risk makes the system safer for smaller shocks. He attributed Goldman's survival of the 2008 crisis to its rigorous mark-to-market accounting and risk culture, and stated that if other banks had managed themselves the same way, there would not have been a banking crisis.
Transcript (19 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Lloyd Blankfein0:00
I know how to quiet down this crowd. All those who's standing, $5,000 ahead.
Brook, quiet. Thank you so much for your kind words, Glenda, and thanks for the center for having me here tonight. I have to say it really is an honor. Let's get a copy of that. I really enjoyed that video. This is a friendlier audience than I'm used to.
Let me start off by congratulating the other honorees for all the great work they do. Google, Lena, Don, congratulations. Now John, you heard John, and I promised I'd get the last word. We are, we're friends outside. We see each other running into each other all the time.
And I have to say I really wish he stayed and could listen to my remarks. In fact, I don't really understand why he left. Day in, day out he goes and talks to five people, all of whom trip over themselves as to who hates Trump the most. Here he had 800 people willing to do the same thing.
And yet he left. To be honest, I'm flattered to be here, but it also gets a little bit squirmy at the prospect of being thanked for supporting fairness and equal treatment. I just feel this way. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way.
But as I said, I kind of liked it when I was leading Goldman Sachs. You know, I had a kind of idea of what issues I should speak out, what issues I could speak out. I was always aware that people were interested in my opinion because of my platform, and I felt I should use that platform for things where people would feel that were appropriate to my job.
In a way, you know, there's issues that are personal issues to me that I feel a little bit like I'm misappropriating somebody else's asset if I use that and leverage something I felt personal about. But there are things I'm a kind of licensed to talk about, and those things related to kind of finance. Things like would be good to balance the budget, good if we didn't default on our debt, good if we didn't run our deficit out to infinity, and good if we kept trading with people in the world. Financial stuff.
But I also felt it was my responsibility as head of the company to be the champion of the people who work for us. I mean, these are people that I commute to the firm. I say, you know, people have choices where they can go. We recruit the best people, great schools, they can go to other places. And I say, come to us, you'll have a great career. And I kind of felt an obligation, not just a license to support them, but an obligation and a duty to do it. To use the voice that I had at Goldman and my own voice to make sure everyone was able to bring their whole selves to work, to realize their full potential without distraction. It's lesbians, gays, bi, trans, HIV positives, people of color, immigrants. I owed it to the people because I recruited them and they came from, followed, they followed our lead.
Now, I was, as was alluded in that video, around the time that states were legislating for marriage equality, I was co-chairing the Partnership for New York City. And that's kind of a, that's a CEO organization. And the best analogy would be it would be like a Chamber of Commerce if New York were a normal city. But guess what, we have a lot of CEOs and a lot of big companies in New York, so it tends to have a little bit of an outsized influence.
I was asked to get involved with the lobbying effort around marriage equality, and I did. And you know, oddly enough, they would ask me to make the business case. I kind of thought there was a justice case too, but they asked me to make the business case for some reason. In any case, it got a lot of attention once it went public.
Now in those days of the financial crisis, I think maybe you probably don't remember the financial crisis. I still have PTSD, so I remember it. Now, in the more, you know, as part of that financial crisis, I would, you know, adjusted my life a little bit. I would have my wife go out and start the car for me in the morning. I would, I would also, but the thing I was most scared about, most scared about, was the press. I would have my wife read the newspapers in the morning and tell me if it was safe to look at them.
So one day Laura comes in and waves the paper at me and tells me it's not the normal headline for you, but it's a different one. In fact, I haven't seen that video, it was up there. It was the headline: 'Blankfein Supports Same-Sex Marriage.' I told her, 'My gosh, it must have been a typo.' I said I was for some-sex marriage.
Now over the years, I've had many people come out to me. I've had many people come out to me in the firm, and I have to say it always pained me to think about the waste, the wasted energy, the wasted mindshare, the time, the stress that people went through to disguise themselves every day. I didn't live this life, and if I, if I, if I'm not doing justice to the feelings you have, excuse me, this is my best to try to be empathetic. But I always imagined in my job, I, you know, I'd think I'd leave a room and I'd think, how did I perform? Did I do well? Did I do what they think of me? And you know, did I act enough like a CEO in that meeting?
And then I think of all the people, ones who come out to me, and I review in my mind what must they have lived like when in addition to wondering whether they did their job well, they performed well, whether they were convincing, whether they were effective, did I act straight enough, was I too gay? What I mean, again, I didn't live this life, but I just imagined. I just imagined what a burden that must be and how much more effective that people could have been in their job, let alone happier in their lives.
One of the partners that I've been very, very close to, a good friend of mine for many years at the firm, came into my office one day and he was wearing his jacket. That's always a bad sign when somebody who works with you comes into the back, you know, you know you're gonna get news, and news is very rarely good news. So I thought to myself, oh, bad sign. And he was a bit tense and nervous, and he came and he started out, said, 'Lloyd, I need to tell you something. My wife and I are getting divorced.' 'Wow,' I said, 'I'm so sorry for you.' He goes, 'Wait a second, that's not all. I'm in a new relationship.' He said. I said, 'Oh, is that it?' And he said, 'No, it's with another man, and we're in love.' Again I said, 'Is that it?' And he said, 'Yes, isn't that enough?' And I said, 'Thank God, I thought you were quitting.'
I'm very humbled that a very small thing that I did and an opportune moment was appreciated by the people at our firm and had a broader impact on the community. I'm also glad that we have a place like the center here in New York City to extend support to so many others and absolute saints who work there.
Recently I took a tour of the center to learn more about it, so I could say I took a tour of the center. And I say, my god, what an incredible village, small place. Yeah, I'd say the energy and the bit in the building was palpable. And I say it was a happy place, and I know it wasn't always like that. I know the conditions and the circumstances into which that was created in the middle of the AIDS crisis of the 80s, and it couldn't have obviously been a happy place then. But it's evolved into a happy place now, and I was really glad to see it. I'd say a highlight of the visit for me was the Keith Haring bathroom.
To those of you, for those of you who don't know exactly what I'm talking about, go on Google. Thank you, Google. Go on Google, type in 'Keith Haring bathroom center' and you know, and you'll be investigated by the FBI. I'll just say on the same-sex versus some-sex question, there's no ambiguity. The mural has both.
Again, thanks a lot for this wonderful honor. I also recognize that intolerance and ignorance still plagues too much of society, but when you consider how much has changed so quickly, and marriage equality is a great example of that, I really am optimistic about our collective future. So thank you all very much for this great honor.