Ethan Ruby has used all of his resources to make difficult circumstances make a difference to the world.
By Chris Pierson
Ethan Ruby is a multitasker.
He has the talent of making other people multitask, without even knowing they’re doing it, as well.
For example, Ruby and his partners Adam Baruchowitz and Mike Sorrell have made it possible through one of their latest enterprises, WearableCollections.org, for hundreds of New York City apartment dwellers to recycle old clothes and support research into a cure for paralysis at the same time.
Ruby and partners have convinced dozens of residential buildings to place WearableCollections bins in their recycling rooms, and these bins have the potential to remove tons of recyclable textiles from landfills and prevent the release of tons of harmful chemicals into the atmosphere when textiles are burned and what is not reused, is recycled. In about a year, the bins have collected more than 650,000 pounds of clothes. Ruby and partners sell what they collect to a company in New Jersey that gives away what can still be worn to people who can use it; the rest is shredded to become fill for furniture, pillows, and mattresses. Some of the proceeds go to nonprofit organizations like The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.
Wearable Collections is just one of several pans Ruby has in the proverbial fire. As another way to raise money for Spinal Cord Injury research, Ruby and his family have been organizing The Ruby Run for the past 6 years. The annual Run is a gathering of family and friend in Central Park, coming together for their shared goal of finding a cure for paralysis. This year The Ruby Run will donate $12,000 to The W.M.Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, at Rutgers University, and The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.
Relevant to readers of Action, Ruby also supports the Life Challenges Program at Mount Sinai Hospital’s spinal cord injury department in New York City. “I made available a ‘pay it forward’ program to allow newly injured patients and their families to go skiing, skydiving, sailing, or just enjoy a night on the town,” he says. “They pay for the cost by paying the favor forward, further advancing their recovery by contributing to other’s well-being in some capacity. Starting cycles of positive energy is the principle behind all my projects.”
In the Crosswalk
Everything Ethan Ruby does is a story in itself. Even so, he’s modest about his achievements.
“I’m the least accomplished person in my family,” he asserts.
A native of Berkeley, California, Ruby’s parents Eric, a pediatrician, and Terry, a physical therapist who recently got a PhD in mental health counseling, moved Ethan and his kid sister Abby (who also has a PhD, in women’s studies) to New England for their formative years. Ethan played baseball and hockey at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, before moving on to Brandeis for a year and finally settling on the University of Pennsylvania for college.
After earning a degree in psychology, Ruby moved back to Boston. A friend from Brandeis, Adam Baruchowitz, introduced him to the world of day trading, which he practiced in Boston and Miami before moving to New York to trade with “the best of the best.”
Ruby and Baruchowitz moved their company, Boo Trade, LLC, to Broad Street, just off Wall Street, in lower Manhattan in 1999. At its height, the company had 35 traders. Adam’s brother Mitch joined the team after completing law school. Ruby was part owner and managing director of the enterprise, worth over a million dollars. He was 25 years old.
On a drizzly night on the Lower East Side in late November 2000, Ruby was on his way to visit some potential traders to add to the team when he came to the corner of Delancey and Orchard. It was about 9:00pm. As he came to the median halfway across Delancey, a car driven by a drunk driver ran a red light and struck another car, sending it barreling into Ruby.
He was thrown into the air and landed hard against another car’s windshield. “I remember feeling the light rain on my face,” he says, “and then absolute blinding pain.”
Over the next 48 hours, Ruby went in and out of consciousness.
Touching Bottom
Six feet tall, 195 pounds and with just 8% body fat, Ruby was in great shape at the time of his injury. He would later agonize over the thought that if he had only seen the car coming, he would have-and could have-done anything to get out of the way.
He went through rehab at Burke Hospital in White Plains, New York.
“In the hospital, you make deals with yourself to keep yourself sane,” he says. “‘You just need to be like this for the next three years, or the next five years,’ you tell yourself. ‘They’ll have a cure by then.’ And the body is amazingly wise. It doesn’t give you the full amount of pain right away. It knows you can’t handle it.”
Once he tried to resume his life outside the hospital, the apparent permanence of his condition hit him hard.
“When I was introduced to the catheter, to the bowel program, when I learned how to get from my wheelchair to the car, it bothered me that I had to adjust to these things,” Ruby says. “But it was going to bother me more when I got to the point that those things didn’t bother me. Everything was so laborious, so tedious. It zaps all the energy out of you. I really only got depressed when I had to mourn my active life.”
He considered suicide. He decided that would be selfish. He would be free, but his loved ones would be left to deal with the pain.
“There’s no point in living if you’re going to be miserable,” Ruby told himself. “I decided then and there that if I wanted to live, I would have to maximize the life I had left.”
Best of His Abilities
Ruby’s injury had repercussions for Boo Trade, which was forced to shut down in 2003 for a variety of reasons. “My injury was not a good scenario for the company,” Ruby says. “We started to struggle, but we didn’t want to fire anybody. We cared about our employees. We made a point of hiring people we enjoyed spending time with.”
He began to look for ways to use all of his resources to help people in his situation, and prevent others from getting into it.
“Day trading”-Ruby’s day job-”is the work I’m least interested in of all the things I do,” he says. “Saving the world does not pay very well, so you have to engage in lucrative projects to fund your altruistic endeavors.”
His job helps him finance the work he’s most passionate about. Since 2004, he has served, without salary, as chief pedestrian advocate for City Streets, a New York City nonprofit that works to promote public transportation use and pedestrian safety.
“Whether you take your private jet or the subway into the city, everyone is a pedestrian at some point,” Ruby says. “Public transportation should be based around people walking. What we do benefits not just people in wheelchairs, but mothers with strollers, elderly persons, anybody who walks in the city. I want to make sure no other family has their life ripped away from them the way mine was.”
Ruby enjoys dabbling in many areas and aspects of helping others and uses his talents in a variety of projects. He sits on the board of the Community Counseling Center of Connecticut, an organization dedicated to providing quality mental health services to anyone who needs them, regardless of financial position. Their slogan is, “We treat people, not privilege.” Ruby established a “pay it forward” program, which allows people who can’t afford services to do good deeds for others in the community in return for the services they need. Ruby also is the director of the New York City chapter of The Buoniconti Fund, and sits on a modern dance company board in the city. Public speaking is his newest call, giving speeches at colleges, high schools, medical classes and business seminars on topics from overcoming adversity to motivational inspiration. This past summer he gave the commencement speech at a school in Providence and is always open to the next speaking opportunity.
Passions
Ruby discovered another of his newfound passions a couple of years after his injury: poker. It started with online games. He discovered he had a knack-and a competitive streak. But what he really enjoyed about the game was the universality of it.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re crippled or what color you are or whatever,” he says. “It all boils down to one mind against another. I’ll take those odds any day.”
Ruby has gotten so good at the game that he now dabbles professionally. This year, he made history, reaching the finals of the World Poker Tour and becoming the first person in a wheelchair to play pro poker on national television. He donated his purse to Poker4Life.org in the process, a charity he started with his brother-in-law Jeremy Schwartz. In five years, Poker4Life has raised more than $500,000 for The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis and other charities. “It’s a unique concept of combining poker and charity giving,” Ruby says. Poker4Life seeks to benefit all charity organizations by bringing key sponsors together with enthusiastic poker players for a fun and productive evening of cards and fundraising.
Ruby met his wife Julie, a psychoanalyst, at Brandeis. Friends at school, they became a couple after they both moved to New York. They have been married for two years and are expecting their first child in January.
See, there is life and productivity after SCI!
Christofer Pierson in managing editor of Action.
