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Born in March 1935, Peter grew up in Belle Harbor, Queens, and then Woodmere, Long Island, the son of an attorney who had put himself through Brooklyn Law School at night. At Hobart College he skipped the fraternities, serving as president of the Independent Council instead, and formed friendships that lasted a lifetime—his freshman roommate later became his business partner. He earned his B.A. in 1956.
After learning to sell—Fuller brushes, furniture, typewriters, real estate—Peter joined IBM in 1961 and spent ten years selling data processing equipment to Wall Street. In 1970 ADP recruited him with an irresistible pitch: instead of selling the machines, sell the results. He spent three years selling, then ran ADP's Portfolio Record Keeping Division.
In 1976 he struck out on his own, co-founding Interim Systems, a temporary staffing firm that added a thriving Wall Street messenger division. The company was sold—for cash—in August 1987, two months before the market crashed; Peter stayed on to manage it until 1992. In 1995 he acquired Prime Office Centers, operating flexible office centers at Grand Central, Penn Station, and Wall Street until retiring in 2018, at 83.
In 1963 a blind date arranged by his mother led, four dates later, to his engagement to Ann, a schoolteacher; they married and raised a son and a daughter in Manhattan. In 1970 they bought a weekend house near the beach in Westport—from Ed Mitchell of clothing-store fame—and in 1997 traded it for a country place in Weston, where they have lived full-time since the pandemic.
Their son, Ken Pollack, an expert on Gulf state geopolitics, recently spoke to the Y's Men—and hearing him got Peter thinking about joining. Quoting Charlie Munger—as you get older, either you make new friends or you have no friends—Peter looks forward to doing exactly that.
See the full bio here
(Interview and Bio by Clarence Hayes)
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