Wharton grad's new job: Clean up credit mess

Nearly seven years ago, Neel Kashkari, the former rocket scientist in charge of the financial bailout, was up to his eyeballs in a mess at Fort Dix.

Then, the mess was a failed leadership-building exercise held at Fort Dix by Kashkari's professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

His current mess is real life - the largest financial crisis in a generation, and Kashkari, 35, who earned his master's degree in finance from Penn, has the job to clean it up.

Kashkari (pronounced KAHSH-car-ee) was chosen Monday by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to direct the government's $700 billion bailout program. Kashkari is one of several Goldman Sachs Group Inc. colleagues recruited by Paulson.

Kashkari, who went to Goldman's San Francisco office after he graduated from Wharton in 2002, is the interim head of the newly created Office of Financial Stability.

Kashkari, assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs, joined the department in 2006.

He will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, although Paulson will be leaving his job in January.

In February 2002, Kashkari and 100 of his fellow Wharton graduate students were at the Fort Dix Army Battle Lab running through a hypothetical scenario: figuring out how to transport and assist hundreds of Bosnian refugees during a one-day cease-fire.

"The event, by comparison [to his U.S. Treasury assignment], is totally trivial," said Kashkari's professor Michael Useem, who ran the exercise and remembered Kashkari out of the 400 students he teaches a year.

"It's academic. Still, the stress is great, and the stakes are high. By putting people in these kinds of situations, they are going to be more prepared for big decisions later on when there are many stakeholders pulling them in different decisions," Useem said.

He declined to comment on Kashkari personally.

At the start of the exercise, Kashkari was optimistic.

"We were all taught to play nice," he said in an Inquirer article covering the event. "So who's going to fight in the sandbox?"

In the end, Kashkari and the others failed at the scenario - partly by the design of the instructors, who wanted them to experience hurdles and failures.

But, said Kashkari's good friend from his Wharton days, failure is not the typical outcome when Kashkari is involved in a project.

"He's one of the smartest guys you know," said Geoffrey A. Johnson, managing partner of Catamount Capital Management in Minneapolis. "There might be others who are smarter, but he combines being smart with being able to manage a project and lead.

"It's more than leadership," Johnson said. "It's inspiring confidence that you can get the job done.

"I don't think anyone at Wharton who knew Neel is surprised one bit" by his appointment.

Kashkari, who was president of the Finance Club at Penn, could not be reached. Calls to his cell phone went unreturned, and the voice mail box at his home in Silver Spring, Md., was full.

Kashkari grew up in Ohio, the child of parents who emigrated from Jammu and Kashmir in India. His father, Chaman Kashkari, now retired, taught engineering at the University of Akron, and his mother, Shelia, is a pathologist.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering. He worked for TRW Inc., now part of Northrop Grumman Corp., developing technology for NASA space science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble's replacement.

When he came to Philadelphia, he and his wife, Minal, who now works for Lockheed Martin, lived on Franklin Town Boulevard, near the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Johnson and Kashkari were among four or five students in a learning group. At Wharton, learning-group teams in the first year attend classes and work on projects together intensively.

"We spent a lot of time hanging out at the Black Sheep," an Irish pub in Center City, Johnson recalled.

"We all worked together well," he said. "You know that whatever you need to do is going to happen, because Neel can get it done.

"He drinks a lot of Diet Coke, that's how he gets it done," Johnson laughed.

He described his friend as an avid Cleveland Browns fan who named his dog Winslow after a player.

Johnson said he and his friends have been e-mailing Kashkari all day, congratulating him on managing the world's largest hedge fund.

"My only regret is, now I have to call him czar."

Job: Assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs, and now interim head of the newly created Office of Financial Stability.

Age: 35.

Name pronounced: KAHSH-kar-ee.

Home state: Ohio.

Education: University of Illinois, bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering. Wharton

School of the University

of Pennsylvania, M.B.A.

Former employer: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., where he headed the information technology security investment-banking practice.

Earlier: He helped develop technology for NASA space science missions.

SOURCE: Associated Press

EndText