Full of conviction and confidence that his opinion mattered, Shervyn von Hoerl grew up hoping to go into foreign policy. But political burnout shifted his ambitions before he even started on the path. Deciding to “sell out” in the world of finance ended up leading him to work that he enjoyed and a path back to politics, but with a completely different outlook. Find out how listening to others can lead you to pick the side that feels more authentic for you.
Guest Shervyn von Hoerl, Dartmouth '96, is Iranian-American and had thought as a child touched by the fallout from foreign policy decisions that he would hitch his wagon to a politician’s star and be Secretary of State one day. Participating as an operative in campaigns during high school seemed to pave the way. But after college, he felt burned out on politics in general and even questioned the point of it all.
Deciding to “sell out” as he called it and make a living in New York in the world of finance, he ultimately landed a job in structured capital. He was surprised to find the work interesting and something that he was good at and so has remained in the industry for two decades. While not completely passionate about the work itself, it has afforded him the opportunity to pour his soul into other thing, namely local politics. After changing parties and honing a new collaborative style, he is part of something political that fills him up after all.
In this episode, find out from Shervyn how listening to others can lead you to pick the side that feels more authentic for you on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Shervyn von Hoerl has more than 20 years of experience in the structured finance industry, having developed innovative capital solutions for many types of clients. He is co-chair of the Fair Haven Democratic Municipal Committee near the Jersey Shore, where he proudly lives in a brightly colored Victorian with his family.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Shervyn von Hoerl: At a certain point, I had to have a real discussion about, OK, it's not just foreign policy, that's politics in the US about the policy. I don't agree with the fundamental principles. What's the point? This is not what it's about.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Fun of conviction and confidence that his opinion mattered, Shervyn von Hoerl grew up hoping to go into foreign policy. But political burnout shifted his ambitions before he even started on the path. Deciding to "sell out" in the world of finance ended up leading him to work that he enjoyed and a path back to politics, but with a completely different outlook. Find out how listening to others can lead you to pick the side that feels more authentic for you on the next Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today, I'm here with Shervyn von Hoerl, and we're going to talk about picking sides, examining choices and walking the road, so sort of a nice to have you with us.
SvH: I am really happy to be here. Thank you.
LJR: So I start this the same way with everybody. When we were in college, who were you and who did you think you would become as we were leaving?
SvH: So when we got to college, I was an opinionated, self-satisfied kind of a jerk who thought he was a lot nicer than he actually was when we left. I kind of had no idea, like I was so convinced and so comfortable with what I was going to do, because I knew it for years and years and years and years and years. And by the time we hit graduation, I wanted nothing to do with it.
LJR: Really oh, go back. Go back. When you got to college, who did you think you were going to become?
SvH: I was going to be involved with politics, but not as a politician. Right like I thought I ultimately wanted to make a run at Secretary of State. And the way you do that is you hate your wagon, the politician, and you work your butt off. Right I thought that that's what I was going to do. And I was definitely a Republican because at the time, I thought Republicans are the best foreign policy outlook. Obviously, it was very biased from my background. I'm half Iranian and I was actually born in Tehran. My father was American, mother was Iranian, and we were there during the revolution. And actually my father had to go into hiding for six months, eight months, and which meant that I didn't see him and my mom was off somewhere. So I was being passed around family member to family member. My my uncle, who was an Air Force colonel, was disappeared. And luckily he was OK mostly, and they released him. But, you know, he was tortured in jail. And we had no idea where he was when he was gone. I have family that were executed because of who they were. So know, I felt deeply, deeply betrayed by Carter and the policies of the United States that allowed the Shah to fall on this step. And so, you know, that's where I was. And I knew that's what I wanted to do, which met probably law school or Johns Hopkins School of foreign and International Affairs or something. And I had been working on it for years. Right I've worked on political campaigns. I've worked in senators offices, at work, in governors offices all through high school. By the time I was done with college, I didn't want any of that. Wow but I didn't know what I wanted.
LJR: Yeah, OK. But you said, when we got to college, you were not as nice as you thought. You were very opinionated. Did that part mellow? I mean, you were in Tabard. Everybody had to be mellow to be Tabard, right?
SvH: So yeah. If you ask my fellow Tabardites, they'd tell you, I was the most intense time right there. And I was right, like I really enjoyed being in The Tabard because everybody was so mellow and so I could stop vibrating, you know. And so it was a very comfortable, safe place for me to just not have to be in control of everything all the time.
LJR: Yeah So you were leaving. And you had known what you wanted, but it wasn't feeling right, but probably not a lot of guidance to something else that felt more right. So what was your path off of the College on the Hill?
SvH: So my dad was sick. Right and I didn't know. But I guess that I didn't there wasn't as much time left, so I decided, you know, the hell with it. I'm just going to go home because no matter what happens, I'm 22 years old. If something happens to my dad and I'm not there, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. Right OK, it's just I don't have anything. I have to do. So what I need to do is be with my dad. So I was for the next 11 months, he passed away Memorial Day weekend in 1997. At that point, it was like, all right, well now what you've done, the thing you kind of had to do right now, now the world is completely your oyster. You can go do whatever you want. Where do you want to be. And where do you want to do it? Literally, I sat down. I was like, well, I know I want to be in New York City. And I want to afford to do all the things that New York City allows you to do. So I want to sell out. I'm going to move to New York City and I'm going to sell out. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to sell out. And that probably means I'm going to go into banking of some sort of banking is right. I didn't take any economics courses. I didn't take any finance courses. You take a math course at Dartmouth because I place out of all the basics. So we had to. So the four years at Dartmouth, there was no math, anything. Right, because I got to hell of it. I'm just going to go to the city and sell out. So I did.
LJR: Did you have an end? Like a time horizon for that.
SvH: Yeah, I, I was going to do it for three years, ok? I was going out of business school, I got it right. And then went from business school. You can go do whatever. Right you can go work for a big company and whatever. I was doing all the research. I was reading all those books that said, OK, well, you know, if you go to this business school, you're starting salary. Is this right? Right right. You know, so so I was like, all right, what the heck? Go get three years of experience in your city. Get 20-year-old in New York because everybody should be a 20-year-old in New York. I believe that strongly, actually, as much as a city. I still believe that strongly. And it was fun. It was it was not what I expected in any way, shape, or form. I don't know what I expected, but it was nice. But I had a really good friend from high school who was going to Columbia Law at the time, and he let me live illegally in his Columbia Law School, part of it. And so I kind of had a safe base to take a risk. Right New York is a really easy place to not have to spend a lot of money. If you have housing taken care of. Right you could walk just about everywhere. If you have to. You can take a subway somewhere you can find and live on cheap food. If you're familiar at all with Columbia University area. Right like a number of Coronet pizza slices that I ate the first year, I lived in New York City because it was a giant slice of pizza and a drink for $2.25. Right I was it was a day's worth of food. Yeah and that's what I did. And so I just connected with everybody. I could and started interviewing. And it took a while. It took seven, eight months. But I finally found a job working at Moody's, the rating agency, in a field of finance that was kind of ramping up quickly called structured finance, you know, the stuff that blew up the world back in 08. And that's where I started. And it turned out. I was good at it. Great I was very good at it. And I really enjoyed doing it. So here I am. What is it now? 23 years later, and I'm still in finance, still doing structured and really still enjoying it. Business school never happened. And politics never happens. Sort of. Like that's the weird part, right? So I'll come back to that. But I'm in finance. And I really enjoyed it. All the ups and downs, the crisis literally. I worked at one of the banks that went under and I was part of the team that was there to kind of unwind the business after it went under. And that gave me lots of really interesting stuff. I got involved in the Detroit bankruptcy, which is just fascinating stuff. I never I mean, who'd studied the financial health of municipalities. Right and the impact of pensions and all these things? No idea. Yeah, well, here I am.
LJR: I'm reminded of one of my early talks with Dan Gonzalez, who really, you know, struggled with that idea of being so passionate about something or being told we needed to follow the thing that we were passionate about because you had such passion and then it kind of died. And then he thought, well, I'm not passionate about this. I'm doing it for a very practical reason. And you find that it feeds a part of you, even if you're not passionate about finance or municipalities, you know, in general, like it feeds that. I'm good at this. And it's interesting and fascinating. And you're learning something new all the time. There are lots of different ways to find kind of fulfillment in what we do.
SvH: That's the interesting thing, right? Like I thought long and hard about this. Like, I'm very lucky. I really enjoy what I'm doing right. But at the end of the day, the thing that makes me very happy doesn't have to be the job. I have. Write the job is the food on the table. Put a roof over my head and take care of my take care of my family. Right but as long as it does that, it doesn't have to be this all fulfilling thing that we were taught. It had to be right. And I'm trying very hard to teach that to my kids. I'm not doing a very good job of it because, you know, and especially now with this lockdown, I'm here at my desk at 7:00 in the morning and I'm still working. We started this. And I still have a model to build after we stop talking. It's going to be a long day, but I enjoy it, right? Yeah you don't need to do what I'm doing.
LJR: Yeah, it's just made me think when you were saying that, like, what we were taught, and it's funny because what got us into a place like Dartmouth and actually Dartmouth specifically, and at that time when I remember President Freedman gave that address like our freshman year or something saying, you know, they were looking for people who were well versed in Catullus and could play the cello and all of these that made like this well-rounded person. And then we all left feeling like we had to get so narrow, you know, and that the job was going to be everything to us and that it was going to define who we were and build our identity and where's where's the catullus and where's the cello playing in and having to do the. So you have found your Catullus and your cello just not in that. I was going to say in the nine to five, but in the sand. So tell me about what it is that fills those extra moments when you can find them.
SvH: I'm going on a little bit of a tangent here, but I've done a lot of interviews with applicants for Dartmouth right over the years. And the one thing I always look for is, can they get passionate about something like, I don't care what that passion is for, I don't care if it's for academia. I don't care if it's for a sport. I don't care if it's for an instrument. Right but do they have the capacity to really, really care about something in their lives? Right and if they have that spark, I think that would be a very successful career. And I think so. It's because what Dartmouth teaches us, even as we walked out, as you said, narrowing our interest rate with Dartmouth teaches us, is that we have a toolset. We're intelligent enough to pick up new tools if we need to. It's not frightening. It it's just a matter of application. So go like go out there, do something. Figure it out. And because we know you have the capacity to be passionate about something, we know you will make the world a better place somehow, right? Yeah and I love that about that. That's why I'm still involved. Here we are 25 years out. And I want to see that continue to happen to put these kids out there who have no fear of picking up new tools and have the ability to be passionate about something. And again, it doesn't matter. Right, because in the 60, 80, 90 years that we're going to be alive, we're going to be passionate about a lot of different things. And sometimes those things, you stop being passionate about it, be pick up something else. Yeah and this is the circle that I mentioned earlier. Right like, I've gotten involved in politics again and again, not as an elected official or as a politician. But when we moved down here, I did my duty. And I went and voted in the election. Write the first election that came by. And I realized that there were no candidates on the Democratic side, like you had no choice. You could either vote for a Republican.
LJR: And where are you?
SvH: In New Jersey, in Monmouth County. And the party didn't matter because at the local level, there's no Republican way to pick up the garbage. There's no better way to pay the streets. So party doesn't matter really at the local level other than organization, things like that. But but but in terms of policies, everybody wants to make sure that taxpayer dollars are spent well. And that this town is as clean and safe and attractive as it possibly can get. Right no big deal, but it annoyed me. So I was like, you know what, I want to run, but run as a Democrat, and let's see what happens. Right and it just happened as I was thinking this, that I had a conversation with a few people who were involved with the local Democratic committee, because here in New Jersey, actually, by statute, every town has a municipal Democratic committee and a municipal Republican committee. If people want to get organized, there is a statutory infrastructure that they can get involved with. Right and so the person who is chair of the local Democratic heard that I was thinking about it. And so she called me and said, look, if you're interested, go talk. And so we talked and I decided the hell with it. I'm not going to win. I've only been living in town for, you know, by the time the election hit 18 months. So I started campaigning when I'd been there for less than a year. Nobody knows me. And half the town is furious at me because we bought this 100-year-old 120-year-old house. And I grew up in San Francisco, where Victorians are painted bright colors. And we painted the house, bright colors. And half the town hated me for painting the house, bright colors and the other half.
LJR: They knew who you were, which is half the battle of running, right?
SvH: Exactly right. Oh, you're absolutely right. Literally, we were going to get some work done. And I had a contractor. We were in the front yard and we have a traffic light at the corner. So the light was red going East, West, and a car pulled up to the red light, lowered his window and the guy driving yelled out of his window, you're a fucking asshole. And the light turned green. And he went and saw the right light. North, north, South was red. So truck pulled up. Their guy rolled down his window and said, hey, are you going to paint the new shingles. You put up there or leave those plane? I said, no, we're just going to leave those plain to age. It's amazing. I love what you've done with the house. Like literally in the time of one set of changes, the traffic light and the contractor looked at me and said I thought you were lying when you told me this was like this. This is what I deal with all the time. And I lost. Like not that badly, but I lost one, maybe 2% difference between the winner and a loser. So I decided to run again, the next year. I was like, what the heck? Right like, maybe, maybe I have a chance. And another guy who'd been here five or six years at the time was like, well, you know, I've always been annoyed that there were no choices on the Democratic side. And why? Should he run alone because there are two seats? Well, I'll reach out to him and we'll run together. We did. And we had a great time just walking the town and knocking on doors and hanging out together. And buying coffee for people at the local coffee shop. It was fun and he's become a very good friend. And he didn't win that year. Right but he did win the next year. So he became the second Democratic borough Councilman in this town. In the last 35 years, the woman who was chair of the local party ended up moving out of town. And so ended up becoming chair. And I have been very fortunate. Another woman stepped up who had been in town, raised her kids here and was really active in Bernie's campaign in 2016, stepped up and we became co-chairs together. And we've had a phenomenal run. And this year, we actually picked up our fourth seat on the six person council. So the first time in anybody's living memory, Fairhaven is a Democratic majority town. And it's not me. I've actually had very little to do with it other than kind of be the guy going, hey, we got something here, let's keep doing it. And it's been very interesting how we built it. And it's been a group of people who've gotten involved. Once I ran and Chris ran and some other people, you know, and Chris ran with just the second year and just and when he came on board as vice chair and we built this core group of people that we have committed to each other, that we're going to make decisions unanimously. So if it's something difficult, and it means that we're sitting there for two, three hours working it out to get to that unanimous decision, we will do it right. And we've kind of subverted the traditional power structure. The way that these local organizations are designed to work is as chair. You have a lot of power as chair. You allow people to have votes on the county committee. You make all these decisions because the idea is then that you deliver this vote, this power to the next level up, who then delivers and so you create the machine doesn't work anymore. Right but it creates this power. Right and we've decided forget about that's not the way it's supposed to work. You just care about our town. And if we end up getting involved on the county level or whatever, OK, but what matters is the way we're going to make the right decisions for our town is to work together, to come to things that work for us. So one of the council members is an ex marine. So he's got decisions that are over here. And we've got Chris and myself. And finance. We've got somebody who's a lawyer and somebody who's a teacher. And so have all of these things and due care about. So that's been very different. And it's so different and such a different way of interacting with politics than what I was doing when I was 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and involved in politics. But it's night and day. And I love it. But you can hear it, right? I'm boring or you hear the tears with minutia that just don't matter. But they matter to me because it's so cool, right? It's the community that we built that happens to have a political interest to it. And it's fun. And that's one of the things that really fills up my spare time.
LJR: Yeah And I guess I'll ask you the question rather than telling you my perspective on this. You had known at 20 whatever that this kind of building, this structure was something possible. And all the stars aligned to kind of have this one party system in a town that could withstand to and all the stuff like, could you have done it then? What did you need to do? Was there time that needed to pass?
SvH: Was there. I think a lot of time needed to pass. Right and this goes back to what I was saying, that I was a very opinionated and kind of jerk when I went in. Right like, I was positive that I was one of the smartest people out there. You don't get to Dartmouth without having some of that, right. That, you know, if you put the work into it, you can do what you need to get done. Right so I knew I was smart. And I thought I had all the answers and none of that would have worked here. What has worked is the ability to say, I don't have all the answers. And I know I don't have all the answers. The way we're going to get to the right answer is that making sure everybody gets hurt. I don't I don't think I have that skill, I don't think I had that view where I cared to hear what other people had to say. I'm kind of ashamed of that, honestly, right, like, you know, yes, I had friends, yes, I tried to take care of them. And all that. But the fact is it was I know what the right thing to do is here. I may not share that with you, but what you're doing is wrong. And I know it's wrong. So I'm being kind by not telling you that you're a fuck up. Right like that was me at 16, 17, 18. Now it's like that, right? Like we could figure it out. I'm positive. We can figure it out, but I don't going in. I don't think I, I do have the answer. So Yeah. I don't think I could have done this 25 years ago. And is that at all related to why you think you kind of burned out too early or lost the love of it, that there was some realization that like I'm in the right. And this whole system like does isn't set up for that unilateralism? I think so. But also, you know, again, San Francisco. Right so, yes, I was a Republican by San Francisco standards. But if you kind of think of what was going on in the Republican Party. And the conservative movement in the mid to late 90s, it was shifting rightward pretty hard. Right and then, you know, the last year or freshman year, in fact. So before Bill Clinton got elected, right. California sent two groups to the convention, one that was the official group that was comprised of people like the founder of the log cabin, which is gay Republicans. Right and another group that felt that they weren't conservative enough and were literally walking around the convention with a button that said burn the log cabin. And I kind of know, I was I was on the tabac, right. I was I wasn't particularly conservative when it came to personal choices. I was very libertarian, small L libertarian. Right I wanted to use drugs, go ahead and use drugs. There are consequences. But it's your life. Make your choices right. Who do you want to sleep with? Who do you want to love? Who do you want to. I don't care. It's none of my business, you know. But don't break the law. Don't kill somebody. I care about that. Right? if you want to fall in love with somebody who's the same gender that you are, who cares. You present as a male and you want to wear a dress like what difference does it make to me? Right you want to spend the rest of your life married. This is people can marry. Right, like the same married to the person you love. And they're the same gender as you are. Why shouldn't you get health care and you're still doing local politics work? When I left college, I went to be with my dad was I was I was working on a Communications Committee for the local Republican party, and somebody was yelling at me about how I was going to burn in hell because I was OK with domestic partner benefits. What the hell does this have to do with. I don't understand. And so that was kind of I remember standing there going, you know, I'm trying this was I was supposed to be doing. I don't care about it, but now I really don't care about them. Right what's the point? This is not what it's about. Right right. At a certain point, I had to have a real discussion about, well, OK, it's not just foreign policy. It's politics in the US is about domestic policy. If I don't agree with the fundamental principles when we were seniors, both the presidents of Dayglo were members of The Tabard. They were my friends. Why would I want to live in a world and interact with people who thought they were going to burn in hell and were terrible people? Because they were I had objective proof. They were kind, wonderful, smart, intelligent, funny, loving people. How can you judge people like you can't at a certain point? I have to say, I'm not willing to. And so now this collaborative effort and really focusing on what your community needs and the best way to do that. Clearly fills your soul in a way that never was going to.
LJR: And so. You have a family.
SvH: I do.
LJR: And you're, I'm sure, by that model, imparting a lot of things to the next generation. What is it that you kind of take with you from your experience in the last 25 years that's most important for you to impart?
SvH: I mean, this is not original in any way, shape or form, right, but but meet people where they are and listen to them like that just because the answers that they've come up with aren't the answers that you've come up with doesn't mean that their answers are wrong. Yes, it's different when you're building a financial model of 2 plus 2 has to be 4. Right but, you know, even building a financial model, you make assumptions, right? You have to make assumptions. You cannot represent reality in an Excel spreadsheet. Right so you do the things that you choose to assume away or to include or also. Right so why are you making these assumptions? Is are they really the right thing and everything that you do? I'm still an opinion, right? I still know I have a lot more answers than some people, but but I'm willing to listen when somebody tells me you don't this is wrong. Or maybe you should think about it this way. Right, and if I can teach my kids to do that right, meet people where they are and understand that you're not always going to have the answer, which is a hard balance. Write as a parent, because you kind of have to have the answer. All the time, right? You can't tell them. You don't always have the answer, but you really need to eat your broccoli. Right So how do you walk that line? But if I can teach them to accept the people around them. And treat those people with respect, then I kind of have done what I need to do as a parent. Yeah, and that's kind of weird, right? Like, that's not at all what my parents thought, right. My parents, like, you have to go to the best college possible. You have to get the best job. You have to do all these things. So long as you have a job, as long as you can put a roof over your head. So that's OK. You need to be good. You need to know the people around you. You need to talk to them. You need to build community. And part of it part of it is my middle child is non-binary and has been and knows they are non-binding and have known since they were three. They didn't have the vocabulary at three. They just knew. Right like today, daddy, today. I don't feel like a boy. OK, well here's the wardrobe we have. That's a girl's wardrobe. You know, a three-year-old girl girl wardrobe daddy today. I don't feel like a girl. OK, well, here's the boy wardrobe that we have, right? It's taken them time to develop the language and the way of expressing themselves. They've known it in their course, since they were three. And it scares me because still, even today, it's a scary world to be openly non-binary and. Right so so part of the community building has been a little Machiavellian, right, in that if I can build this community around us, then that's that much safer space for this child to grow up. It and the support network that they'll have. And I think this is where a lot more of my empathy comes from is this knowledge that, look, if I want this for my own child, I need to show it to everybody else.
LJR: Yeah Yeah. And, you know, as you said, like, we had different upbringings and we've had to learn some of these lessons, and it's taken us longer than hopefully the next generation will have to wait to learn it all. So I think that you're exactly in the right place, even though I'm pretty sure at 20 you could not have dreamed that this is what you would have been living.
SvH: No, it's nothing at all. Right like what I expected at 20 years old, and I'm OK with that. You know, it's not like I've fallen down on a dream or anything like that. This is cool. It's been an adventure. And this is why I'm less stressed about my own kids. Again, if we give people the tools to learn, they'll figure it out. If we give them if we put in the right building blocks, the empathy, the ethics, the morals, the interest in the world around them. Everything else will work out great. That's my belief. You know, we can all have the help. We can.
LJR: Well, I'm so glad that you're here to give us hope and to share your story.
SvH: Thanks so much for having me. No problem. My pleasure.
LJR: That was Shervyn von Hoerl who has more than 20 years of experience in the structured finance industry, having developed innovative capital solutions for many types of clients. He's co-chair of the Fairhaven Democratic municipal committee near the Jersey shore, where he proudly lives in a brightly colored Victorian with his family. Wherever you live, we hope you're enjoying hearing these stories about life's twists and turns. Please consider not only subscribing to the show on Apple Podcasts or another platform, but also sharing it with other people who you think might enjoy it. Have them look out for me. Leslie Jennings Rowley and other friends at RoadsTakenShow.com or on the next episodes of Roads Taken.