2010 NEO Person of the Year George Maragos


The very foundation of America has always been its self-made men and women, from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton and even Sarah Palin in most recent times. And the lifeblood of the American dream has always been the immigrant who came to these shores searching for his or her own dream and through unbelievable hard work and dedication came out successful and became a model American citizen.

Our 2010 NEO Person of the Year George Maragos fits that mold and this year with his election as Nassau County Comptroller and announced run barely months later for Chuck Schumer’s U.S. Senate seat, achieves a level of success he might have thought impossible when he first came to America.

But then again Maragos has been defying the odds since he left his native Lefkada and emigrated to America by way of Canada.

“The future is wide open,” he says about his current political plans, which also bespeaks the ambition that drove him to levels of achievement that might have seemed truly impossible for a young immigrant. He earned an engineering degree from McGill University in Canada before moving to the U.S. in 1978 and earning an MBA from Pace University and going on to become a vice president at Chase Manhattan.

“Becoming Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank was a huge accomplishment, especially for a young boy from Greece to reach that level,” he rightfully boasts to writer Markos Papadatos.

But he went beyond that: in the true entrepreneurial spirit of American self-made men (he became a citizen in 1985) he also founded his own firm, SDS Financial Technologies, which services the financial industry, and though he never previously considered running for public office, he felt compelled to run this year (and win on his first try) after being approached by the Nassau Republican Committee.

“After serious consideration, I accepted to run for Nassau County Comptroller because I thought it was time for me to give something back to the community,” he says. “I felt the need to make government more fiscally responsible and more efficient in delivering its services to the general public.”

He’s tackled that in typical fashion in his months in office. “I have applied my 35 years of common-sense business experience in senior management to bring results by streamlining government, promoting efficiency and cutting waste and malpractice … I moved quickly to restore fiscal responsibility,” he told the Hicksville Illustrated News.

And with the zeal of an over-achiever, he thinks the same can be done for national government. America, he says, is “in the third year of a major recession during which millions of Americans have lost their jobs,” with “families doing more with less,” while “Washington has been doing less with more,” and “our children and grandchildren will pay the price…in a limited, over-regulated economy paying more taxes for less service.” This, he says, “is not acceptable” and what Americans want is “less deficit spending, elimination of earmarks, smaller government, fewer entitlements, and more individual freedom.”

It is the proud ambition of a self-made man, who rightfully joins our list of Greek American movers and shakers and past recipients of our NEO Person of the Year award: Congressman John Sarbanes, Philanthropists and power couple Eleni and Markos Kounalakis, AHEPA President Ike Gulas, and entertainer Tina Fey.

Dimitri C. Michalakis

©2010 NEOCORP MEDIA

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