Background
David Blankfein-Tabachnick is the son of Robert Blankfein and Leslie Wald Blankfein. He has a notable family background in academic, professional, and philanthropic leadership. His father is a Manhattan physician and Class Council member of Yale College’s Class of 1954—a select cohort, including Richard Gilder, Joel Smilow, Charles B. Johnson, Gerald Grinstein, and Russell S. Reynolds, Jr., renowned for its record-setting $110 million “54/50 Fund” and lasting impact on Yale. Robert is the son of Jules Blankfein (Yale College Class of 1921), who was also a physician, philanthropist, founder of Physicians Hospital in New York City (founded in 1935), and a member of the Board of Trustees of New York Medical College. On his mother’s side, David descends from generations of pioneers in oral and maxillofacial surgery: his grandfather, Columbia graduate Arthur Wald; his great-grandfather, Armin Wald, who was among the specialty’s New York City founders in the early 1900s; and his great-great-grandfather, Henry Wald, MD, an 1871 graduate of the University of Vienna Faculty of Medicine and a preceptor in surgery at Columbia University in the late 1880s. Armin Wald’s nephew, Charles A. Reich, was a Yale law professor and cultural icon. David’s grandmother, Addy Wald, was a Holocaust survivor and received a college degree from Columbia University prior to the University becoming officially co-educational.
