[Tango-L] Ney Melo & Jennifer Bratt on MSNBC

[Ney Melo]

Tango related 9/11 story on MSNBC airing today at 4pm Eastern Time.

See it online: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CNBC/TVReports/Post911DealMakersShunWallStreet.aspx

Post 9/11, deal makers walk away from Wall Street
Tragedy gives new direction and meaning to lives of Ground Zero Survivors

The terrorist attacks that took down the neighboring Twin Towers
affected Wall Street in nearly every way imaginable.
One of the most profound effects is the soul-searching that steered
some of the Street's most driven deal makers and most incurable
workaholics onto new career paths.
Lisa Della Pietra, Ney Melo and Connie Duckworth are among those who
surrendered adrenaline-fueled jobs in the nation's financial capital
to follow a more personal path.

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CNBC video: Watch Melissa Lee's report
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Before 9/11, Della Pietra was earning more money than she ever dreamed
possible as a stockbroker at H.C. Wainwright.
"The more you have, the more you want," she now says of her career at
one of the nation's oldest investment banks. "You get caught up in the
stuff and the materialistic things in life."
Those concerns started to melt away when she received a phone call
from her 24-year-old brother, Joseph, on the morning of Sept. 11,
shortly after a jetliner rammed into Tower One at the World Trade
Center.
Joseph Della Pietra was on the job at Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage
that occupied Floors 101 through 105 in the North Tower. He called his
older sister a second time to reassure her he'd be OK. But none of the
658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees at their desks that morning survived.
"I think there are some days that I'm still in shock and I don't
believe that Joey's gone," Della Pietra says.
Also gone is Della Pietra's Wall Street ambition. The aptitude she
once exhibited in selling stocks is now put to use raising money for
her high school alma mater's 9/11 scholarship fund. Her brother is one
of 11 graduates of the Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
who perished in the terrorist attacks.
"I'm poorer now and I've gone through more pain than I did in my
entire life," Della Pietra says. "And I'm the happiest I've been."
A tango virtuoso
Since 9/11, Ney Melo has danced to a different beat.

Melo worked in lower Manhattan as a banker for Lehman Brothers (LEH,
news, msgs). An elevator in which he was riding on the morning of
Sept. 11 became stuck between floors in the chaos following the
terrorist attack.
"If I get out of here alive, I'm never doing this job again," Melo
vowed to himself.
Melo walked out of the building and never looked back. He and a
partner, Jennifer Bratt, now run a school to teach the "close-embrace"
tango style that evolved from the milongas, or dance parties that are
a nightly occurrence in Buenos Aries.

Ripples from 9/11 are also being felt in Miami's South Beach, where
Connie Duckworth has come to sell wool rugs woven by Afghan women. The
project is the work of Arzu, a Chicago-based nonprofit founded and run
by the former Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs) executive to help
Afghanistan's women and children.
Arzu, which means hope in Dari, puts Afghan weavers in touch with
agents who provide materials and guidance on pattern and color that
translates into rugs marketable in the West at higher prices.
In return, the weavers put their kids through school and take literacy classes.
"Weaving for Arzu is often the difference between life and death,"
Duckworth says. "It allows (the weavers) to put food on the table. We
have families that are eating meat for the first time, literally, in
years."
During her 20-year career at Goldman Sachs, Duckworth became the
company's first woman sales and trading partner. Two years after 9/11,
she published a primer on starting a business, entitled "The Old Girls
Network: Insider Advice for Women Building Businesses in a Man's
World." Duckworth serves on the U.S.-Afghan Women's Council, a
public/private partnership established in 2002 by Presidents Bush and
Karzai.
Like so many others, she is weaving together a life that has taken
unexpected shapes and colors since the 9/11 tragedy.


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