Zaim Hajdari

The Staten Island boy got his start on Wall Street and later launched a hugely successful private financial practice.

If you ask Zaim Hajdari where is he from, his answer is very complex: “I am an ethnic Albanian, my parents are from what is
today Montenegro, I was made in Italy, and born in the U.S.A.” Like so many ethnic Albanians, Hajdari’s parents, Halil and Nafije, left behind
their extended families and their homeland. They left Bobosht—a small fishing village on the banks of Lake Shkodër in Montenegro—in
1971, landing in Tor Lupara, Rome, Italy. On October 13, 1971, approximately five months later, they finally arrived in the United States.