Buffalo, NY – Buffalo native Laura Pedersen will address the Canisius University graduate Class of 2013 on Wednesday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. in the Koessler Athletic Center. The graduate class is comprised of 758 Canisius students.
Pedersen is a best-selling author, journalist and former television host, who left the University of Michigan at age 18, after just one semester, to clerk on the trading floor of the American Stock Exchange. She won a seat on the Exchange at 20 (the youngest person to do so), became a partner in a Wall Street firm by 21, and banked her first million by age 22. Around the same time, Pedersen also earned a degree in finance from New York University.
Pedersen traded the frantic pace of the stock exchange, at age 25, for the solitude of a writer. She penned Play Money, a memoir of her brief but brilliant career on Wall Street and how she prevailed in the trading pits among male rivals and split-second judgment calls that yielded her employer substantial profits and at times, losses.
The book became a best-seller and Pedersen followed it up with Street-Smart Career Guide, a resource for the investing public on how to turn work into wealth. Both books served as the basis for Pedersen’s weekly column in The New York Times and her former talk show, “Your Money & Your Life” on the Oxygen Network.
A Buffalo native, Pedersen is proud to be from the City of Good Neighbors. In her second memoir, Buffalo Gal, she boasts about the quality of life in Buffalo, even while growing up in the economically devastated Rust Belt during the 1970s. Buffalo Unbound is a similarly humorous and heartfelt celebration of the people and places that make Buffalo an exciting city.
Canisius will confer an honorary doctorate degree upon Laura Pedersen during graduate commencement ceremonies.
For more information about graduate commencement ceremonies, contact the Office of Public Relations at 716-888-2790.
One of 28 Jesuit universities in the nation, Canisius is the premier private university in Western New York.
