Suze Orman is the host of The Suze Orman Show on CNBC.
She has written six consecutive New York Times Best Sellers; has written, co-produced, and hosted six PBS specials based on her books; and is the most successful fundraiser in the history of public television.
On the video below Suze visits the Google campus to talk to Google employees about making the most of money.
Among other anecdotes she relates how she lived for three months in a van on Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, California. She then became a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery on College Avenue. In 1980, a longtime customer gave her a loan of $2,000 and took up a collection from other customers totaling $50,000 to help finance opening her own restaurant. The loan was to be paid back in ten years with no interest. Orman invested the money at Merrill Lynch, but four months later was broke again, after her stockbroker had led her into bad investments.
Orman returned to Merrill Lynch and entered their training program to become an account executive and later on sued them. Suze received the entire $50,000 back plus interest and was able to pay back her former customer. After she completed the training, she was hired by the firm and remained there until 1983 when she left to take a position as a vice president of investments at Prudential Bache Securities. In 1987, Orman resigned and opened her own financial planning firm, the Suze Orman Financial Group, in Emeryville, California. She acted as director of the firm until 1997, when she stepped down as her writing career took off with the publication of her second book. She received the honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009.
