A tale of leadership, adversity, and growth: Ed Zier to provide personal remarks at 9/11 Service
GROSSE POINTE FARMS Aug. 25, 2025 – Cataloging the human aspect of the day, rather than something encyclopedic about 9/11, was one of the reasons that Ed Zier wanted to write his book.
Zier, of Naples, Florida, will be the featured speaker at The War Memorial’s 9/11 Service of Remembrance. The service begins at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11.
At the time of 9/11, Zier was 43 and worked as the chief operating officer of Baseline Financial Services. The business was headquartered on the 77th and 78th floors of the South Tower at the World Trade Center, officially known as Two World Trade Center. Zier’s office was situated on the 77th floor. On 9/11, Zier never made it into Manhattan. Instead, he made it as far as Hoboken, New Jersey before turning back and returning home.
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in 2021, Zier’s non-fiction memoir titled “Undaunted” was published. The book commemorates the bravery and fortitude of his colleagues as they confronted death, destruction, and despair on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the weeks that followed.
“New York was where the action was, and I loved its pace,” he said. “I loved the financial community and all of the analytics that went with that.”
Zier, now 67, is a 1980 graduate of the University of Notre Dame. After his time there, he decided to get his Master of Business Administration degree at New York University. He subsequently worked at CompuServe for 11 years in its Wall Street office. After asking Zier to move to Columbus, Ohio and into the consumer world, Zier knew it was time to leave the company.
“I joined this pseudo-startup called Baseline in 1993,” he said. “I was their 20th employee. At that time, they had an office a few blocks from the World Trade Center.”
Baseline Financial Services was a financial software firm that was founded by Rob Patterson in 1980.
In the course of his work at Baseline, the firm developed a strategic relationship with Alger Management which was founded by Grosse Pointe philanthropist and key War Memorial supporter Fred Alger.
“Fred was one of the early growth managers,” Zier said. “Baseline was an institutional portfolio manager’s tool. It was designed for firms like Alger Management, to give an edge to portfolio managers who were picking equities. Alger Management was an early customer of ours and they used us for stock selection.”
Around 1999, Baseline came out with Portfolio Link and needed some beta sites of fund managers who had significant numbers of portfolios and were sufficiently successful. Alger Management was one of a select number of firms that were reached out to. According to Zier, Alger’s success and proximity were attractive. Alger Management was headquartered in One World Trade Center – the North Tower.
“SeiLai Khoo was the key portfolio manager and our contact,” Zier said. “Dan Chung, the current chief executive officer at Alger, was an analyst and was involved in our beta test. Mike Howell was their network person and to make the link work, we needed to marry the very confidential holdings of Alger on their servers with all kinds of security around them, with our fundamental data on public companies. We were bringing to them something they had never seen before.”
Khoo, Howell and David Alger - Fred Alger’s brother - were three of 35 Alger Management employees who were killed on 9/11.
With Baseline’s growth necessitating a much larger space, the business moved to the South Tower in September 1999. Speaking about the World Trade Center, Zier mentioned that it took some getting used to, going from the 7th floor of a Class B building, to a building that was 1,362 feet tall.
Author Ed Zier holds a copy of his non-fiction memoir titled “Undaunted,” which was published on Sept. 11, 2021. One World Trade Center is seen in the background, towering over the New York City skyline.
“The height got to a lot of us,” he said. “One of my first days of work there, a salesperson called me and said ‘Ed, check out the blimp.’ I look out and said I couldn’t see it. He said to look down! That made my knees buckle.”
Being headquartered at the World Trade Center, Zier recalls, helped make Baseline employees even more proud of what they as a group had accomplished.
“It was a global icon,” he said. “It represented success in and of itself. The company felt like family.”
Zier had four colleagues on the 78th floor of the South Tower who perished when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into it.
“Our hope is that they didn’t suffer,” Zier said. “But some of our people were still alive and trapped on the 77th floor.”
The four Baseline employees who were killed on 9/11 were Jill Maurer-Campbell, Bob Levine, Steve Weinberg, and Ruth Lapin.
“Jill left a 10-month-old son at home who recently graduated from U of M in Ann Arbor,” Zier said. “I’ve become good friends with him. Bob was our CFO who was supposed to retire Sept. 1 but had some health concerns and being out a while, he wanted to stay another month or two to help get the budget for 2002 in order.”
Only being back to work for one week, Zier said that Levine was probably too weak to walk down 78 floors. Weinberg was a father of three, who as Zier explains, started to head down the stairs with others from the accounting department when he said he had forgot something and told the others to go ahead.
“They went down without him and never saw him again,” Zier said. “What he went back for, we will never know.”
Regarding Lapin, Zier said that she was a wonderful lady that brought mature presence to Baseline’s younger programming staff, and had only been with the firm three months.
In speaking about “Undaunted,” Zier notes the undaunted nature of Patterson to create a successful bond, and the undaunted nature of the company to be familial, collaborative, and communicative.
“I believe that our corporate culture enabled the group on 77 to survive,” Zier notes.
He shared that the two reasons he wrote the book were to give his colleagues and best customers to have something left of the 9/11 experience; and to catalogue the human aspect of the day, not something encyclopedic about 9/11.”
“While it was a horribly negative day, and that’s an understatement, there were positives surrounding the human nature reaction to events,” he said. “
At the time of 9/11, Baseline had about 225 employees, 190 of which worked at the World Trade Center. A dozen workers were still on the 77th floor when it was struck.
“We know only 96 made it into work on our floors before we were hit,” he said. “Sixteen people overall decided to stay. The four on the 78th floor lost their lives. When the 12 people on the 77th floor were knocked to the ground, when the plane roared above them and the entire ceiling caved in on them, our floor probably moved 30 feet in a matter of seconds. When they got up, most were not together and instead of running for the exits, they first found themselves and as a team, examined all the exit routes.”
The author explains that Baseline employees felt fortunate that the North Tower was struck first. At 8:46 a.m., hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 93 through 99 of One World Trade Center, also known as the North Tower.
“That gave people time and pause to say ‘do I stay or do I go’,” he said. “Most people elected to go.”
Between the moments of each tower being struck, at 8:46 and 9:03 a.m., Zier desperately left messages for colleagues Levine and Vice President of Sales Nick Webb.
“I then called my wife and she’s at home watching a little black-and-white TV in the kitchen,” he said. “She sees the plane fly into my office as I’m ringing her.”
Not knowing that Zier isn’t in his office, his wife begins screaming and using some curse words, saying ‘we’re under attack and these are two commercial airliners.’ I think she even said ‘everyone you know is dead.’”
As Zier got back home by the afternoon of 9/11, he already knew it was the most surreal day of his life.
“I still to this day can’t convince myself that that really happened,” he said. “You couldn’t even make that stuff up. There were 50,000 workers in the World Trade Center and I think that’s what Al-Qaeda was after.”
In discussing how 9/11 changed him, Zier says he no longer was the “rah-rah, go get ‘em,” Type A personality.
“I was a polite, but determined businessman who would often put in 12 to 14-hour days,” he said. “After 9/11, I was very focused on family and life-work balance of my own employees. I no longer felt divine obedience to the corporate goals.”
To register for the 9/11 Service of Remembrance, click here.
About The War Memorial
The War Memorial, located on the shores of Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms, is an experiential space open to everyone. For over 75 years, this nonprofit organization has served as a patriotic, cultural, and community center, offering a wide range of innovative programs for all ages. Annually, The War Memorial welcomes thousands of guests for community events, educational programming, and private gatherings in its unique and historic setting.
At its core, The War Memorial celebrates the ideas of American democracy while honoring those who have defended these ideals with tireless effort and personal sacrifice. As a dynamic and forward-thinking hub for southeast Michigan, The War Memorial remains committed to inspiring and enriching the community through unparalleled experiences. This includes a steadfast commitment to patriotic programming that honors the legacy of service members and amplifies the voices of veterans through storytelling, education, and public engagement.
###
CONTACT:
Alex Szwarc, The War Memorial
Patriotic Programming and Communications Administrator
313.881.7514, aszwarc@warmemorial.org