Edward "Ted" DREYFUS

Ted’s Updated Autobiography (2021)

The opportunity Staples gave me as an AFS exchange student to Brazil was transformational. I spent over 30 years living and working in eight countries in Latin America. My three kids were born there, Randall (46) in Costa Rica, and both Genevieve (38) and Rebecca (33) in Chile. I’m now happily living in NYC with Sue Lehmann, a social impact entrepreneur who has her own kids and five grandchildren. Sue and I met in 2004 after my divorce and return to the States.

After Staples I went to Wesleyan, then Oxford, then the Peace Corps in Brazil (organized a fishermen’s production cooperative in the jungle), then the City of New York as assistant to Mayor John Lindsay. From the late seventies I worked

in Latin American finance and economic development as a banker (Citibank, Chase), project and turn-around manager for local banks in Argentina and Mexico, and land developer. I had a cattle ranch and forestry project in Argentina. Later I joined the fight against climate change working for the Clinton Foundation on tropical deforestation projects in East Africa and South-East Asia, then spent a year in Guyana working on the country’s Low Carbon Economic Development Strategy.

For the last five years I’ve been taking classes and teaching in CUNY’s Graduate Center (formerly the Institute For Retired Professionals (IRP) at The New School), a peer learning group. I’ve led classes on Environmental Change and Global Warming (for which Jerry Melillo has been my long-distance mentor), Narrative Non-Fiction, and South American Film.

Sue and I travel frequently especially to see our far-flung kids, spend weekends in the country--where we’ve sheltered from Covid--hike, spin, do pilates, and spend time at our farm in Uruguay where we raise horses and trees.