Daring to Dream
Few would have predicted that Joe Moglia, former gang member, would someday run TD Ameritrade, an $11 billion financial services company.
Moglia grew up in Washington Heights, one of New York’s toughest neighborhoods. His father was from Italy and owned a corner grocery store. His mother was from Ireland. Together they raised five kids in a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment.The Moglias kept the kids close to home or working in the shop. And for good reason. Two of Joe’s best friends didn’t make it out of their teens. “One died of a drug overdose. The other was killed by police while robbing a liquor store,” Moglia recalls.
School, it turned out, would be his salvation. Fordham Prep, an all-boys Catholic high school in the Bronx, dared inner-city kids like Moglia to dream big—and gave them the tools and the discipline to make it happen. Says Moglia, “Had I not gone to the Prep, there was a pretty reasonable chance I could’ve been with the guy who was robbing the liquor store.”
A star athlete, Moglia hoped to go to college on a sports scholarship. Instead, his girlfriend became pregnant. He soon found himself married, driving a cab and working for his father to support his new family and pay his tuition at Fordham University. The grind was relentless, he says, and “I really missed—I really, really missed—the involvement in sports.” He asked the Fordham Prep administration if they would consider giving him a job as an assistant football coach. They did.
An economics major, Moglia became fascinated by the world of business and wanted to become an investment banker on Wall Street. “But I so loved the coaching and got so much satisfaction from working with the kids, that I pursued a career in teaching and coaching.” After sending out a hundred applications, he got one offer, from a private school in Delaware. In 16 years, he coached five teams, each time moving his growing family. (Moglia and his wife eventually divorced, and he remarried in the mid-’90s.)
In his last position, at Dartmouth College, Moglia helped coach the team to two Ivy League championships. “I should have been ecstatic,” he says, “but I wasn’t. I realized that if my passion for something I loved and was good at was starting to wane, then maybe there was something else I was supposed to do.”
At 34, Moglia set his sights on Wall Street. He figured if he didn’t make it in three years, he’d go back to coaching. His experience as a coach turned out not to be a hindrance but instead a door opener. Once inside, Moglia says, “I’d tell them, ‘All I’m asking you to do is take a shot on me as a trainee. Frankly, it’s not that tough a bet. If that’s too much risk for you, you’re not the guy who would hire me and I’m probably not the guy who would want to work for you.’ ”