Dean Melanie Leslie interviewed Adam Amsterdam ’85 in the first event of the Pathways speaker series. Amsterdam spoke of his 30-plus years of experience in corporate law and reminisced on his time at Cardozo.

Amsterdam summed up his complex area of law as “the plumbing of Wall Street.” As the General Counsel for Broadridge Financial Solutions, he said his role involves the behind-the-scenes part of buying and selling. He has worked both at a firm and in-house, but he enjoys the luxury of focusing on a very narrow part of what brokerage firms do. “I love it when I get a legal question because I can dig into it,” he said.

At Cardozo, Amsterdam was Associate Editor of the Law Review. He reminisced with Leslie about the “wailing wall,” where grades were posted in a glass case. He said he appreciated how in law school you could come out with a different answer than your classmate and still both get the same grade.

Although Amsterdam excelled at law, it was never a top choice for him.

“I’m not the greatest planner,” Amsterdam confessed to the audience. He originally dreamed of becoming a doctor like his grandfather. “Be open to possibilities…You can’t be successful in business if you eliminate all risks.”