ARMY, WALL STREET, GS, AND NEXT B-SCHOOL
BY SIOBHAN C. PHINNEY, GS ’99

At first, Wayne Thorsten wasn’t sure if he had made a mistake. “When I got in, I hated it. But, you go over a hump. In the beginning, I stunk. I was a terrible soldier. I wasn’t good at details. But you get good at them. People are depending on you,” he says.

Wayne and Jennifer, at the Redmond home, live on the Upper West Side in Manhattan.

Wayne went from hating the Army to loving it. One of the highlights of his military career was the three and a half years he spent as part of a LRSD (long range surveillance detachment) team in Rhode Island. It was a small elite unit of only 36 men. Wayne reminisces, “These guys are unbelievable. I was really honored to be around them.” For Wayne, it was the realization of a big dream. “Everyone wants to get a maroon beret [worn only by airborne divisions]. When I walked into the chow hall, I felt like a movie star. It was a big deal.” Wayne also went from being a bad soldier to one who was honored in 1997 for his military skills and knowledge by winning the “soldier of the year” competitions of his Battalion, Brigade, New York State, and the 42nd Infantry Division. Ironically, says Wayne, “All the things I had previously stunk at, I was given an award for.” Wayne never did make it to the Gulf, but did spend just less than two years in active duty followed by nine in the reserves. After active duty, Wayne went West, where he landed a job at a mutual fund company and dreamed of one day working on Wall Street. When he spotted an ad seeking an institutional bonds salesman in The Wall Street Journal, he responded immediately. “I faxed my resume, small as it was at the time, but they didn’t really take it that seriously. They said, ‘You’re in Washington State. How are we going to interview you?’” Wayne said he’d fly out, which he did the following day.

“I maxed out my credit cards and bought a ticket. It was so expensive because the flight was the next day. They couldn’t believe I showed for an interview, so they hired me.” Wayne stayed at that job just short of a year before moving on to Two Wall Street for two years. He later worked at Eurobrokers at two World Trade and First Albany. In 2000, Wayne decided to try his hand at something new. He attempted to start a high-end wireless venture, building the first directory of wireless subscribers, which was to be privacy protected using software. Unfortunately, the business was never able to get off the ground. Wayne acknowledges, “You learn from your mistakes. We were too dependent on outside funding and right as the bubble was bursting, everyone started jumping off the boat.”

He says, “It was my idea, so I had taken charge and I had a great collection of really qualified people helping me. The only one who really wasn’t qualified was me. When things didn’t work out, I got a little upset about the whole thing and thought, ‘That’s it. I’m going back to school. I’m going to be a vet, work with animals.’ I had wanted to do that when I was a kid.”

When Wayne was admitted into GS, he changed his mind, opting for a computer science major.

He also had to say goodbye to the LRSD unit of which he was so fond. “It was just too demanding with school. Yeah, it’s only four days a month, but you have to stay in really good shape.”

Wayne went into a local regular reserve unit, which was one of the units called down to the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11, 2001. According to Wayne, “Like a lot of people, I just happened to turn on the TV and there it was. I waited for a call and then went down.” Eurobrokers, where Wayne had previously worked on the 84th floor, lost 64 people. Wayne, reluctant to talk about his experience, says simply, “It was a big dark mess. It was every emotion you can think of. I didn’t lose any loved ones. I lost friends, but I didn’t lose a wife or a kid. I can’t imagine every day, thinking about that. It’s not my place to be waxing.”

Wayne left the Army for good to focus on school when his contract ran out the following February.

An honor society member due to graduate in May 2004, Wayne already has another software company in the works. He’s also squeezing in a couple summer courses and doing artificial intelligence research for a professor. In addition, he’s studying for the GMAT and getting his admissions stuff together for graduate school where he hopes to study business or financial engineering. Wayne would like to stay at Columbia for graduate school and hopes the admission gods will be kind to him.