After a hurricane destroyed his boyhood home and everything in it, Bill Tovell left for college and looked for a new life. Another disaster, on the morning of September 11, 2001, had a similar impact on him and left him searching for what was to come next. Find out how looking for meaning after disaster strikes requires forging one’s own path.
Guest Bill Tovell, Dartmouth ’96, left for college shortly after Hurricane Andrew ripped through Miami and destroyed his boyhood home and everything in it. He went as far as he could, to the wilds of New Hampshire, and looked for something new. He tried new things, such as rugby, and even set aside some preconceptions he had about a life in medicine. Economics and corporate recruiting took him into banking in New York despite a tantalizing set of discussions with the CIA. His work within financial services seemed fairly typical. But again, he was looking for something new and took an opportunity in Bermuda. A bounce back to his old organization in San Francisco seemed like a good move, but became less fun a little while later when the dotcom bubble burst and his entire team—except him—was let go. He was asked to move back to Manhattan, which he did on September 7, 2001.
The morning of September 11, Bill found himself on the 50th floor of 60 Wall Street, from where he saw the second plane hit the World Trade towers. The immediate aftermath of that event stayed with him and ultimately led him to take a year to travel around the world. When he came back, he was fired up to take some action.
In this episode, find out from Bill how looking for meaning after disaster strikes requires forging one’s own path.…on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Bill Tovell has been working in global corporate and investment banking with a variety of clients across a diverse set of industries with the same financial services firm—off and on—for the last quarter century. For the last twenty years, he has been involved with the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. As a civilian board member, he champions the efforts of post-9-11 veterans, specifically around mental health and PTSD. He lives in Dallas with his wife and two sons.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Bill Tovell: And the second plane came up the Hudson and I watched it hit the building. I would have testified in court that it didn’t go in the building, ‘cause from my vantage point I thought the wing clipped the building and the plane kept going. My immediate reaction was: We have a problem with air traffic control; they’re sending planes, like…and the guy said “No, something’s wrong.”
Leslie Jennings Rowley: After a hurricane destroyed his boyhood home and everything in it, Bill Tovell left for college and looked for a new life. Another disaster, on the morning of September 11, 2001, had similar impact on him and left him searching for what was to come next. Find out how looking for meaning after disaster strikes requires forging one's own path…on today's ROADS TAKEN, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
I'm here today with my friend Bill Tovell and we timed this so that our episode would air the week of the 20thanniversary of September 11th and you will know why as our conversation unfolds. But we’re sitting down here at the end of August. So, Bill, thank you so much for being here and welcome.
BT: It’s good to see you or hear you.
LJR: So, I start this the same way every time, Bill, and it’s with two questions: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
BT: When I came to Dartmouth, it was a mess. I grew up in Miami, Florida. My house was destroyed by hurricane Andrew, August 24th, 1992. I had just come from an unbelievable situation where my home of 16 years was destroyed while I was there. So when I got to my freshman hiking trip, I was just so happy to be there and met great people on that trip. I signed up for a moderate hiking trip. And apparently my trip leader was dating a trip leader of the more advanced one. So that's why I met folks like Dave Erickson and Travis Horton, where I had no business being unsafe. I'll never forget this because I had, I had a knee problem and my knee cap dislocated eight miles into the hike. And they said, well, look, you can either walk to the road, but it's going to be five miles. And so I just, just kept going. And we got to our first campsite, it was pouring rain and the person who had the tarp in their backpack didn't know they had that. So we were, we were soaking wet the second night. They had tried to surprise us with friends that had chainsaws and Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The chainsaw is obviously to create like effect to scare us. We were also exhausted, nobody moved. And then they came over and said, Hey, we're just kidding. Come have ice cream. And we're like, no, we're good.
So when I got there to Dartmouth, it was physically far away from Miami, Florida, as you could be. And I didn't know anybody there, there was one person a year ahead of me from my high school that had gone there, but it was the reason I chose Dartmouth actually was because I had no connections to it. And I wanted to do my own thing. And I always had kind of a chip on my shoulder about doing my own thing.
I was pre-med slash very undecided. And the only reason I was pre-med is because I had an awesome biology teacher in high school. And when I sat in some of those chemistry classes, my freshman year, I saw people that want to be doctors since they were. And I had my whole plan. I did my LSA my sophomore fall. I wasted completely my sophomore, winter recovering from knee surgery and also plotting out my premed course and my sophomore spring. Thanks to Jamie Hutter, I started taking economics courses and fell in love with it and was doubling up on classes and, and ended up being an economics major, which I had no intention of doing when I went to Dartmouth.
So I came in pretty much a hot mess. I remember that my GPA in high school, cause they weighted for honors and AP courses was a 5.4. Then I wasn't even top five in my high school. My freshman fall. I had a 2.7. I literally cut my GPA in half. I just didn't care. I was just so happy to be there. And I remember a lot of my friends were playing rugby freshman year and I was like, God, that would be great. But with my knee I can't do it. So I actually went home to my hands. And had knee surgery after our freshman year without telling my parents why. And so sophomore spring, I tried out for the rugby team and I was terrible, but I was a big dude and they needed big dudes. So I remember like Jesse Israel was like, teach me how to play. And all these guys, they were so nice and the time commitment wasn't huge. But I remember after my first practice, I went back to the se house and I had gone to Stinsons and gotten two, five pound bags of it. And put them on both my legs. I was like, this is way too much running for me. I can’t do this. It was the comradery, you know.
So my best friend who I've known for 40 years went to public school where I lived and he was a year older. So I started pivoting and doing things in high school that I knew would, you know, to try to get myself in the best college I could ‘cause as soon as I got to college, I wanted to enjoy myself.
I was all set to go to Duke. I mean, I had bought a a hundred dollars worth of stuff at the bookstore. I remember Matt Miller and I talking about this freshman, winter being like, why did we do this? We're both going to go to duke. And it was just, it was a weird gut field. So I had my visit to Dartmouth after duke and the flight was already booked and I was, would stay one extra day then when they were supposed to, cause I wanted to see what campus was like, not what they were trying to pitch.
And it was just, it was just this. Cool vibe of people that were, that were smart, that were, you know, willing to live in Hanover, New Hampshire for four years. And it was a gut-feel and it was the best decision I've ever made.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. I had that gut feel too, and I was a hot mess, probably a hotter mess when I left than when I got there, actually. But talk to me about when we were getting ready to leave, who had you figured it out? At that point you were and what it, what was the next thing going to be for you?
BT: Yeah, I had it all planned out and it didn't go. According to plan, my intent was to go to university of Virginia for business school. I had been accepted to UVA before I'd heard from duke or Dartmouth and was all sent to be a Cavalier.
So I thought, you know, I want to go there for business school. It's a great business school. So I just wanted to do something for a couple of years and then do that. And, and in a way it was sort of putting off what my career was going to be ‘cause I had no idea. And I did the typical, you know, summer internship at a consulting firm and Adam Medros.
And I can, can debate the merits of consulting versus banking on another podcast. But I went through corporate recruiting. You had the same group of people that were getting all the interviews for our investment banking and consulting. They were the three sevens, Magna, Coombe, whatever my father told me, I graduated Magna Cum Surprise.
My GPA was, was not in the upper echelon of Dartmouth. So I went through corporate recruiting, having no idea what. And then as many people know, I ended up in a financial institution that had rejected me for an internship. So I wrote the generic cover letter and I, I applied to more jobs than you can imagine.
And there was one I was really interested in and I think it was the first year they had been off campus for awhile that the Central Intelligence Agency was back on campus at Dartmouth and career services in their infinite. Would post who got the interview slots and they had, you know, you'd see general electric chemical bank, Goldman, McKinsey, Central Intelligence Agency.
And there were 12 names of our classmates who were selected. Well, I hadn't applied because I was still thinking about it. And I was going to do economic research in Langley, nothing heroic and, and it was just something I was wanting to do. So I knocked on the guy's door at lunch and I'll never forget he had a gold Rolex. A really funny guy. I introduced myself. I said I’m Bill Tovell and I'm interested in working for the CIA, but I didn't apply. And he said, well, come on in. Because the 12 people that I've selected, I cannot hire. And back then it was a nine-month interview process. So the plan was to work for a company. The internship I had done that summer before in Connecticut, it'd give me an offer and that's, that was what I was gonna do.
And it was, I had to be careful because I couldn't tell family and friends just. And, and then I got I went through the corporate green process and got an offer at a financial institution that ended up where I decided to go. But I came in to New York city clueless. I mean, I've fortunately had two good roommates who were college friends.
And that was, that was helpful in sort of the move to New York. And I look back on my three years in New York out of college, they were amazing because we all worked at different camps. We all had immediate networks. I was not in investment banking. I was a different division of my company. And then I moved to investment making year later because when my roommates got bonuses, I didn't, I was like,
LJR: They knew something.
BT: They knew something I don't, and it was, it was Andrew Webb and Jamie Hutter.
And so, you know, I, I sort of meandered through this, you know, in the back of my mind was always thinking, what do I do next? And the plan was business going. I remember in 98, I was ready to resign and go work for Bacardi. I was going to do a year of marketing and Bacardi, where my father had worked and I called my dad and he said, Bill, not only am I not supportive of this move, I'm going to call Baardi and tell them not to hire you.
How could you possibly leave a company that invested so much in you? And I said, well, that just, I'm doing a year of marketing. So going to business school said, I don't care. Well, I found out years later, my father was actually pushed out of Bacardi. Not happy with them. So I did another year banking and literally out of nowhere, colleague approached me.
She said, listen, I don't want to lose you off of our team. But my friend was just hired by a family to set up a company in Bermuda. And you need someone to go with him, said, okay. And so I moved to Bermuda, like every normal person. It was my startup opportunity. I was setting up a family office. And it was, it was hysterical because I had this big goodbye party in New York. And I saw my friends more when I lived in Bermuda. And when I lived in New York, because I would come back and book trips on Fridays and Mondays and spend the weekend and just literally drive my friends crazy. Cause I was not working investment banking hours. I was working my own hours and it was so random because the family I was working for was out of Australia. So I would, you know, go from my office in Bermuda on a moped to my office at crazy hours. And get on these calls. And we had these, we had this office, which was a house at the top of the tooth two story house. And the bottom was a retired couple from London. And then once came up to me and I said, what are you doing? We hear you coming at like all hours of the night.
It was a disaster for several reasons. And so I ended up leaving that and I went to go visit college friends in San Francisco and lo and behold. So two of my friends were like, Jamie Leonard was a recurring theme in this. Apparently Andrew and Eric Schwartz were already, or no, Mark Zanata was already out there and Eric Schwartz and I moved out.
So the four of us got the least cool house. You can find in the outer sunset of San Francisco, Jamie and I shared a bathroom that was like all pink title and it was built for kids. And Jamie is six, six, and he's like bending over to brush his teeth. But it was a great experience. I was the lone wolf at that point.
Now I was working for a different family and ended up rejoining the financial institution that I was a part of before. And it was fun cause I was the only person out there doing what I did until my company merged with another company. And it just changed everything. And then the.com pebble burst and what went from being really fun, calling on companies that were kids like kids, my age, whose, you know, boardrooms were pong tables and all that stuff.
You'd read. To just not being front anymore. And so they eliminated the entire group that I was a part of, except me. And so I was on a plane September 7th, 2001, back to New York to work at 60 Wall Street and had no idea what was about to happen.
LJR: And, and the plan on the seventh was that you were moving there to work the job. Yeah.
BT: So they had had let go of the entire equities division because of the merger. And also because of just the macro economic. I was it. So they moved me back. I remember I had an apartment on 14th Street. I think that furniture, I mean, I had a mattress and a radio because I pocketed the money. They gave me to move. I didn't have, I wasn't gonna move my furniture. I was like, yeah, that's a great economic win for me. You know, obviously we're leading into 20 years ago and, and the next pivot.
LJR: Yeah. So talk to me about the morning of blue skies in New York. September 11th.
BT: Yeah. If I get emotional, I, you know it, I still can't go to the museum. So I was on the second floor of 60 wall street. My manager was, we had a FinTech lab at the top of 60 wall, which is 50 stories, which absent the towers was pretty tall. So she was called to go up and look at a company that was an IPO-able company. And she's like, no, I don't want to do this. They called her back and said, well, you should come up here.
Anyway, the world trade center is on fire. And so you hung up the phone and we were sitting right next to each other, like a trading floor style. And she said, Bill, Michael, let's go. I think they're lying, but let's just go. So we took the elevator up to the, to the 50th floor and we saw the tower burning.
And my memory at the time was that it was initially reported as a small aircraft. And we're sitting here watching this and September 12th, I was supposed to be on a plane to my grandmother's funeral. So I called my parents who were driving down to Florida. And I said, look, I don't know, what's what this is all about.
And the second plane came up the Hudson. And I watched it hit the building and I would have testified in court that it didn't hit, that it didn't go in the building because from my vantage point, it looked like the plane wing, because if you watch it, the plane turns. And so I thought it, the wing clipped the building and the plane kept going.
And I remember there was a different person sitting next to me. I, my immediate, my reaction was we have a problem with air traffic control. They're sending planes like, like I think the guy said. It's as you said, blue skies…something's wrong. And my parents were, were freaking out because now on the radio, things are happening.
I tried to make contact with people. I knew I called Matt Miller, who was Lou's at his company nearby said, are you okay? And I remember the panic in his voice, like I'm okay. But I got to go. And a lot of our fellow colleagues had near misses. And I, one of my clients that we were working on was a spinoff at Cantor Fitzgerald called E-Speed. And they were, they were all killed. So we, we went down, we were, the intercoms are coming off and, and saying, stay in the building, stay in the building. So we ran down 50 flights of stairs or down to the second floor. I remember passing a Duane Reade on the 20-some-odd floor. And people were worried. It was a bomb because at this point, people just were panicking.
And I give credit to the leadership of my group because he, he didn't panic and all the, all the guys on the floor took off our undershirts and we made masks for everybody. Cause we knew we were going to get out. And at some point the first tower fell and because the streets are so narrow in downtown New York, you couldn't see outside the windows. It was just dark. And at this point, someone in the lobby who was trying to leave the building, cause he was scared. He fell down the floor, had a heart attack and died. And I think, you know, we were about to leave and the second tower fell. And at that point I think they realized that people were going to leave.
And so we, we walked down to the front of 60 Wall and made a left and just walked up, you know, I think the FDR. And it was surreal. I mean, everyone can see in the picture. You know, people who were in low-income housing were offering water. I mean, cell phones weren't working. And I walked back to my apartment on 14th, between Fifth and University.
And my, my girlfriend at the time met me there. We were supposed to move in together. And she was in tears. She was in Midtown. She had raced down to the apartment and I had, could not communicate with her. And I remember I turned on the radio. I had radio and hat. And the doctor from St. Vincent's came on and said, we think there's anthrax in the plane. And if anybody was down there, they need to go to the hospital. And I just looked at her and I said, ah, I'm just gonna take a shower. And we went back to her apartment on 42nd and 11th avenue. And I went to the top of her building and it was, it was amazing. The orderly progression of people on the west side highway that were getting on ferries to go home to New Jersey.
And years later, I saw this YouTube video that Tom Hanks had narrated about the boatlift that happened in lower Manhattan. It's, it's unbelievable. And it was really led by captains of commercial fishing boats or whoever was there to get people off. And, and I remember Matt Miller telling me he almost jumped into the water because the debris had fallen on his building.
And so, so my girlfriend, her friends, they went and donated blood. She wasn't from this country and I just sat there in her apartment and I just lost it. Cause it all kind of just set in. And we went out that night to a bar. I feel like we stayed at probably the bar till seven in the morning. And there were only candles lit in the bar and everyone was just trying to process what had just happened.
And it was, you know, I was getting, I still have emails from friends. Are you okay? Are you alive? It was awful.
And I sold my car in San Francisco to a woman like Walnut Creek. And I remember walking down Fifth Avenue, this is days later. And there was actually this random picture of me and my girlfriend that was in the New York post of me hugging her. I've got an American flag and I hat of the company I worked for it and this woman called me to see if I was okay.
And that's when it set in this, wasn't just a New York thing. So I went through all the stages of agreeing. And then I was pissed. I was really pissed off. So I went back to work and I was really proud to have the way people came together. I mean, I remember, you know, Lehman had owned the Sheraton Hotel. They took the hotel down. The bar was their trading floor. The rooms were used. Banks were working together to get the wall street back up and running. And I worked on a deal in December of 2001 for a company just got acquired called Clear Systems. And it was a small company that provides scanning for rescue helicopters, as well as perimeter security around nuclear power plants. And obviously their stock was, was moving up in there. There was a great demand for their product. And I remember being so proud to work on that deal and it was one of the smallest deals everywhere. And I remember telling my cousin how much we raised. And he said, Bill, you have no clue. It was, you know, millions of dollars. Right. But he's like, you're so arrogant. That's a lot of money. I was like, I know, but the cool part was every investor we talked to from Boston to LA, they're all going to buy the stock regardless. And it was the same way. The reason the stock market came back, is it, everybody pulled together and said, you know, this country's going to be fine.
So I kind of meandered through that year. And then in 2002, I was up for promotion. I broke up with said girlfriend, and it was just another kind of dark moment for me. And so I ended up not trying to stay or not trying to look for a job. And I disappeared for a year. I traveled the world and I started in Thailand with a friend of a friend, basically. And then I was on my own. And I remember calling people and checking in from all different countries, but you know, it was hard cause I was on my own and it was probably the best growth experience of my life. I had blonde hair, which is hard to imagine. I learned how to scuba dive and learn how to surf poorly.
I was supposed to go visit a friend in China, but SARS had broke. Right. And so I, and this is, you can't make this up, Vietnam and Cambodia closed their borders with each other because Cambodia was mad about some soap, opera person who said something drug. I mean, it was ridiculous. So I remember being so geographically stupid that I was going to fly to Perth and drive to Sydney. And I was sitting there and this guy, he was like, you realize that's across the entire country of Australia. Right. You'll die. I was like, all right. Yeah, fly out, fly to city. And so I'm sitting here in internet cafes, booking flights, right. With long blonde hair, goatee. And I just made a whole bunch of friends in Australia. And then I went to New Zealand loved it there. Went back to Australia and flew back on eight different flights to get home, not home, to get to Cabo San Lucas for a bachelor party. And then I was going to go see my parents and go to Latin America for the next three months. And then I, I did my taxes and realized, oh, I owed money.
So I was like, all right, back to the workforce. So I rejoined the financial institution that I worked at before. The running joke is with my friends, that how many jobs are you going to have at the same company? And I moved back into a studio apartment in 2003. I was making less money than I did from before. And I'm just kind of figuring myself out. I had interviewed for jobs. I guess I skipped a part. I went to Europe for a while. Before I went to Dartmouth. I had been in six countries in my life and they were nothing fancy. My father had taken me to London and France. I've been in 50 countries and 42 of those or whatever the number was, was after Dartmouth. I mean, I did my LSA in Spain, which was great.
LJR: But so here we are traumatic life event. A year of kind of self discovery. You have to have a bit of that when you're alone around the world, but yeah, you need to be practical and get the job and get the money and do all that. There's another turning point though, for you in connections that you've made that really are grounded in that day. So talk to us about what that is.
BT: Yeah, so, so I'm, I'm on the board of directors of an organization called Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans of America. And a lot of my history with this dates back actually to nine 11. So I worked with a colleague named Paul Rieckhoff, who was an Amherst ‘98, military family. He worked in the same company. I did hated it. And he was always just going to do it for two years. He was in the reserves. And then he was going to go to officer training. Well that all accelerated, I'm not 11. He was in his east village apartment when it happened. And he just grabbed his gear and provided perimeter security downtown. Then he was deployed, came back and his, his story is unbelievable. And he's, he's a good friend, a very good friend. And so I, he came back in 2004 and started an organization called Operation Truth. And I remember going to. Dive bar in this village and I put $20 in the jar and we've talked about it. And what he was doing, he came back pissed because we didn't have the right military equipment, like telling them these weren't properly set for IEDs. Whole bunch of mess. And I found out many years after nine 11, that when I saw the second plane hit, my cousin who was in the Navy as a pilot, was deployed over Seattle and was there to provide security. So anything in the sky was coming. And my cousin who has since retired as a commander in the Navy, had deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. And you know, as we're recording this right now, it's just absolutely tragic when what's happening right now. And I've spent a lot of time on the phone with him and other friends who, who were over there in different capacities. And we just, we kind of bonded over this. So he would come to New York. We'd go to these galas at IAVA. Yeah. There were fellow Dartmouth folks who I'd, I'd try to, you know, do the whole, Hey, come to my charity thing and who'd been incredibly supportive. But I've been kind of part of this organization for 17 years and my father passed away last year. And I felt it was the time to join the board. Paul, it asked me to join the board years ago and I said, no ‘cause I was trying to get my work-life balance in place. I've got two amazing boys who are now eight and 10 and the timing wasn't right. I was, you know, I was all over the world for work even when I came back.
And so, and I also knew if I joined the board. Going to put everything into it. And I didn't want to make that commitment without being able to follow through. So the pivot was sitting in a pool in Florida with my father who said, A: Get your family out of New York. You know, it's not a great place to raise kids. B: You and your sister works so hard. Don't miss your kids. And I wish that I hadn't been traveled as much when you were younger. And I listened to him because my father doesn't care where I work. He doesn't care. He just wanted. The the best for me. And so my poor wife, I mean, I basically like, all right, we rented a house in Dallas for the month of December. And I basically was moving here regarding no matter what, and made some career decisions that were very risky and it all settled out, all worked out fine, but it was, it was a hot mess coming down here. Right. We still didn't have a couch, but I think that the reset for me was just what is important in life.
I actually commend those that are coming out of college now, because they're not following the corporate path. They're doing things that actually interest them. And to me, and I keep saying this like a broken record, it's 1999 all over again. Right? I made the decision to leave a great job for my startup opportunity in Bermuda. I understand when somebody who's coming out of college, who wants to do their own thing or be part of something, not just the company job. Or their factory job, but make a difference and, and feel good about what they do. And I just hope it continues. I mean, we saw that bubble burst pretty quickly in 2000.
I think, you know, a lot of lessons were learned from that, you know, you don't spend, I don't know where it was $10 million, to hire Aerosmith to play a concert for your opening when you have no revenue. But, you know, look, there were how many auto companies, when cars were invented thousands, right. And just like Google and all those that came out of that, we'll continue to innovate. I mean. Look, what's happening in space. Look what's happening in electric vehicles and I'm confident and hopeful that people from Dartmouth are going to make changes that make our world a better place. Yeah.
LJR: Well, Bill, do you want to talk a little bit more about the organization or no idea?
I mean, so IAVA.org, I joined the board the same day and this was set up this way with a woman on during press with him, Amy McGrath. She was the first female fighter pilots and Marines. She ran against Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, which was challenging to say the least I've got general David Petraeus on the board with me, who's amazing. And it's a grassroots organization that started out of Paul's apartment. And Craig Newmark from Craigslist fame just literally dropped a mic a couple of years ago at a gala by announcing a $5 million donation to an organization that had a $3 million a year. And what that allowed. It allowed Paul to, basically give up his seat as CEO, and he put Jeremy Butler in place, who's amazing who is been all over the media obviously recently as well. And Paul started his own company called righteous media. And he called me and said, you know, I want you to come in and have friends and family round. I said, Paul, I can't even buy a car right now. He's like, come on, come on, do it. So I actually didn't buy a car and I made an investment in his company and my wife and I had made little small investments in companies. We call them lottery tickets ‘cause Paul would be offended. But you know, it's something to get into organizations that we hope will grow. And righteous media, you know, is, is the platform and it's for independent American.
So I was raised, I guess, Republican, but really would vote for who I thought were the right people in office. Yeah, I had George Prescott Bush in my Spanish class in Miami, you know, I mean, it was, it was a lot of Republican feel in, in Miami and my parents were so I I'm an Independent and righteous media is for independence.
And I think over the years, a series of independence had tried to start a party. It's just never worked. But I think now with the polarization of the political realm so far left so far, right? There's so many people who just don't like the ends. They don't like the extreme. But their, their voices get kind of clouded over in primaries and things like that. So my hope is over the next 10 to 20 years, especially as my kids get older, that the voice of independence becomes louder and it, and it becomes the de facto swinging vote in, in major elections, which is funny because…just popped in my head. I, so I ran for vice president of student assembly at Dartmouth, and I was absolutely destroyed. I came in second by like a lot. And I remember writing this like tongue in cheek, op ed, which is still on the D—I found it the other day—about how I'm never going to run for politics ever in my life. And then I watched the movie about the rugby team called a lie where they had to like, literally eat people to stay alive. And I was like, you know what? Life's not. I'll get over this, you know, you're kind of defacto token. When is that? I was put on the committee on standards and that was comical too, because on more than one occasion, I had to recuse myself because I knew that people coming in front of the committee of standards.
Look, I mean, I, I love Dartmouth. My wedding in Charleston had a lot of Dartmouth people. You know, it's, it's, I, I still have a group of friends from Dartmouth and we get together every year and just kind of relive our glory days of Dartmouth. And it's, you know, I've got the Dharma flag outside. I'm not going to be one of those dads where like my boys have to go to Dartmouth. I want them to find their own place.
But I’m forever grateful for that experience in Hanover and taking that risk to move there. And I think it helped to give me the confidence to let me do some of the things I’ve done since.
LJR: Yeah. Well those things are wide-reaching and we probably won’t even know the half of it, ‘cause some of those will probably go to the grave. But it’s lovely to have you really take us back to a place that affected us all in different ways. But I think you’re living out the fire that that stirred in you in a new way and I wish you the best in that new chapter.
BT: I wish you could do this for everyone at Dartmouth. I’d probably listen to all of them. Except maybe three…of the people I didn’t like. But I’m kidding.
LJR: That was Bill Tovell, who has been working in global corporate and investment banking with a variety of clients across a diverse set of industries with the same financial services firm--off and on--for the last quarter century. For the last twenty years, he has been involved with the organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, IAVA. As a civilian board member, he champions the efforts of post-9-11 veterans, specifically around mental health and PTSD. Find out more about this organization at IAVA.org. And find out more about other fascinating people and their moments of change and evolution at RoadsTakenShow dot com or wherever you find your podcasts. Every week, another guest will join me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, for another episode of Roads Taken.