Elisha Wiesel
Shlomo Elisha Wiesel | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 6, 1972 United States |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, hedge fund executive, social advocate, philanthropist |
| Years active | 1994–present |
| Known for | Co-managing Niche Plus hedge fund; former Goldman Sachs executive; Chairman of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity |
| Notable work | Chair of Israeli fintech startup entrio; Board member at FactSet |
Shlomo Elisha Wiesel (born June 6, 1972) is a prominent American entrepreneur, hedge fund executive, social advocate, and philanthropist. He is the sole offspring of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Wiesel dedicated 25 years to Goldman Sachs before departing in 2019.
Presently, he co-manages the Niche Plus multi-manager hedge fund, the inaugural fund under ClearAlpha Technologies, where he holds the roles of founding partner and chief risk officer. Additionally, he chairs the Israeli fintech startup entrio and serves on the board of directors at FactSet. Wiesel also leads the board of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which he is actively revitalizing.
Early and personal life
Born in 1972, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel is the son of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, author, academic, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner with Hungarian and Romanian Jewish roots from Sighet, Romania. Several relatives perished at Auschwitz concentration camp.
His mother, Marion Wiesel, also survived the Holocaust; she was born in Vienna, Austria, and immigrated to the United States after World War II with support from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).
Wiesel grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West and Upper East Sides and attended the Modern Orthodox Ramaz School before moving to suburban schools in New Jersey. He graduated from Yale University in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science and subsequently completed basic military training in Israel.
He is married to Lynn Bartner-Wiesel, and together they have two children.
Goldman Sachs
In 1994, Wiesel joined Goldman Sachs’ J. Aron commodities division after deciding against pursuing a career in video game development amid the rise of technology in finance. During his tenure, he worked under Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn, both of whom later became top executives at Goldman Sachs.
He was promoted to managing director in 2002 and became a partner two years later. Wiesel held the position of chief risk officer for Goldman’s securities division—which included its technology-driven trading operations—and led its global securities strategists team.
At age 44 in January 2017, he replaced R. Martin Chavez as Goldman Sachs’ chief information officer. In this role, he managed the Technology Division along with global strategist groups and was the highest-ranking executive among approximately 9,000 engineers at Goldman Sachs, who made up about a quarter of the firm’s workforce. Later that year in July, Institutional Investor ranked him tenth on its "2017 Tech 40" list.
Board memberships
After concluding a quarter-century career at Goldman Sachs in December 2019, Wiesel volunteered for Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign and began curating his father’s literary works.
In November 2020, he assumed the chairmanship of entrio’s board—an Israeli fintech startup specializing in vendor management based in Tel Aviv (previously known as The Floor).
In March 2023, financial digital solutions provider FactSet appointed him to their board of directors. By 2025, FactSet operated across 37 offices worldwide in 20 countries and served over 216,000 users.
Niche Plus hedge fund
In May 2023, together with Brian Hurst—an alumnus of quantitative investment firm AQR Capital Management—Wiesel launched Niche Plus, a multi-manager hedge fund that represents ClearAlpha Technologies’ first fund. As founding partner and chief risk officer (CRO), Wiesel oversees this initiative which debuted with several hundred million dollars in capital commitments from AQR founder Cliff Asness, Stable Asset Management, and other institutional investors. The fund targets specialized strategies such as temperature arbitrage and operates through 13 teams managing 20 distinct strategies with an objective to raise $1 billion within its first year.
Philanthropy
Since 2013, Wiesel has been actively involved with Good Shepherd Services, a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to supporting vulnerable youth and families, where he has both coordinated fundraising events and served on the board.
He currently holds the position of Chairman of the Board at the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, where he is focused on revitalizing the organization. In February 2024, he revealed that his father's collection of documents and memorabilia would be preserved at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg in partnership with the Florida Holocaust Museum.
Support for Syrian refugees and LGBT rights
Wiesel has publicly advocated for Syrian refugees and condemned discrimination against LGBT individuals in Muslim-majority countries, delivering speeches at prominent institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage. In January 2017, he connected demonstrations opposing Executive Order 13769 ("Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States") with his father's enduring humanitarian legacy.
Jewish–Black community relations
In December 2022, Wiesel took part in the 15 Days of Light event held at Carnegie Hall. The gathering, hosted by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Rev. Al Sharpton, Vista Equity Partners CEO Robert F. Smith, Baptist Minister Conrad Tillard, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, celebrated both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in a spirit of unity.
Advocacy for Uyghur rights
In March 2023, Wiesel provided testimony before the U.S. House Select Committee on China concerning the treatment of the Uyghurs. The following year, in April 2024, he co-organized a two-day conference in New York City alongside Uyghur representatives. The event featured interfaith discussions and survivor testimonies drawing parallels between Holocaust history and the Uyghur crisis. Key issues addressed included China's media censorship, corporate involvement benefiting from alleged forced Uyghur labor in industries such as Xinjiang cotton production, and policies related to forced cultural assimilation.
Israel
By 2020, Wiesel was a board member of Zioness, a progressive Zionist group established by Amanda Berman. Since November 2023, he has actively supported Israel in public discourse. During a presentation at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, he highlighted the IDF's efforts to reduce harm to civilians. Wiesel has strongly rejected claims accusing Israel of genocide, labeling them as blood libel, and characterized protests on campuses as "clearly antisemitic."