Ivan Fairbanks Barbosa: In Search
of Adventure
He
was a nervous mother's nightmare. Even as a child in
Brazil, Ivan Fairbanks Barbosa had so much unbridled
energy that he made every trip to the beach a test of his
mother's nerves. He jumped on the rocks. He dived for
starfish. He constantly challenged the biggest waves.
As an adult, Mr. Fairbanks Barbosa raced cars, enjoyed
scuba diving and even took flying leaps at the end of a
bungee cord. "I was always with my heart in my throat,"
said his mother, Marilena, speaking from her home in
São Paulo. But she said she saw his courting of
danger as only a prelude to the confidence that led him
to success. "He was a winner," she said, "and almost
everything he wanted, he got."
Mr. Fairbanks Barbosa arrived in New York in July of
1999 when he was 28 to work on Wall Street. Eventually he
got a job at Cantor Fitzgerald.
He preferred the sultry life of São Paulo, but
he knew he could make more money in New York. His younger
sister, Roberta, said he was impulsive by nature. "He
told us on a Wednesday that he was moving to New York,
and on Saturday he was gone," she said.
He followed the same pattern when he returned to
Brazil in December 1999 to be married. He arrived on a
Monday, married on Wednesday and on Friday he and his new
wife, Valeria, returned to his apartment in Jersey
City.
Mr. Fairbanks Barbosa always told his family he would
return to Brazil when he had made enough money. And they
expected to see him pop in one day, without warning, and
announce that he was back to stay.
.
