At one point in his life, Ola Holmstrom (E '95) lived for the rush and thrill of the New York Stock Exchange.
"Nothing's going to beat the trading on a good day - it was so much fun," Holmstrom said. "You get exhausted, [even though] you're done at four in the afternoon. You have to be so alert for the whole day, but you can't beat it."
But business wasn't Holmstrom's first venture into the working world. A civil engineer with a master's degree in geotechnical engineering from Tufts, Holmstrom decided after a few years of engineering work to go back to school and earn his MBA.
After graduating from New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Holmstrom took a job at Sea Carriers Management LLC, a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn. While employed there, he traded in excess of 100 million shares of NYSE-listed stock. The fund "did very, very active trading," Holmstrom said, adding that he could "buy and sell something 30 times in a day or 50 times in a day."
When the market cooled off, Holmstrom and his colleagues took a more cautious approach. "When the market slowed down, I did more reporting, analysis and computer work in general," Holmstrom said. "We had to be more picky; the profits were going down."
"When you make a lot of money, it's great. But when you're not, you're not creating anything," he added.
But the longer-term focused analysis was rewarding for Holmstrom. "In the long-term, I like the more intellectual challenge," he said.
Originally from Sweden, Holmstrom first lived in the United States while he was a foreign exchange student in Casper, Wyo. - the childhood home of Dick Cheney. Growing up there was not without its perks: the then-Secretary of Defense gave Holmstrom's high school graduation address.
After the high-profile graduation ceremony, Holmstrom left the United States and moved to Belgium to be with his brother. "The plan was that we were going to work down there," Holmstrom said. When it ended up being "too tricky to get a work permit," the brothers took a year off before going to college and spent the year traveling around Europe, using Belgium as a hub.
As for his time at Tufts, Holmstrom remembers an undergraduate experience filled with friends and lots of coursework. "I needed 38 credits, and I had 41.5," Holmstrom said, laughing. "I was always overloading on courses."
"I really appreciated the people that were [at Tufts]," Holmstrom said. "It was a great mix, and it wasn't too cutthroat. It was a good atmosphere. I think a lot of top schools teach the same things - but it's the makeup of the student body that [matters.]"
Holmstrom continued on at Tufts for another two years: he earned his master's in geotechnical engineering, drawn to the intuitive aspect of the field. "It's not as exact a science as structural [engineering] - it's more 'touchy-feely' engineering," Holmstrom joked.
Holmstrom noticed a difference in his Tufts experience as a graduate student.
"You get a lot more involved in your department, and you get a lot less involved in at least the social aspect of undergraduate life," Holmstrom said. "I liked focusing on something and digging deeper."
Upon completion of his masters, Holmstrom worked for Haley & Aldrich, a consulting firm in Boston. "I enjoyed the projects like the engineering, finding a solution. What I did not enjoy was the politics," he said. "As an engineer, you get squeezed. They see you as an expense. It got a little frustrating that way."
It was then that Holmstrom opted for a radical change. Because he found his geotechnical engineering job "kind of geographically limited - you become an expert on the soil conditions of Boston," he decided his next move would be business school.
"In business school, you can do things that are much more transferable," he said. "I definitely was always interested in going to business school - it opens up more doors."
Even with four years of undergraduate study, two years pursuing a master's and two more years of business school under his belt, Holmstrom still is excited by education. "I like school. I liked the lifestyle," he said. "Who knows, I might even go back to school at some point."
But for the time being, Holmstrom and his wife are living in Sweden. "It's on a trial basis; it's something we're doing for now," he said. "We don't have any kids, and we don't have a house in the States. It was easy to pack up and move. It was a great opportunity to give Sweden a chance again."
Holmstrom now works with his family's company in Sweden. "It's a real estate company - we own some real estate, manage it, and occasionally have projects where we develop," he said.
But the company also offers Holmstrom the chance to bring his own experience to the fore and to shape the company's future. "There's also the asset management part," Holmstrom said. "Our generation is interested in this."
And even now that he's miles away from Wall Street, Holmstrom's past continues to inform his present: "We all worked in the same hedge fund in Connecticut," he said of the cousins with whom he runs the company.
