On September 11, 2001, Joe Daniels was running a bit late to work. He was working for McKinsey, and had spent about five months on site at the American Express office in New York’s financial district, across the street from the World Trade Center. As he got off of the subway, he encountered a scene almost impossible to comprehend: smoke pouring out of a hole in the North Tower, a fireball erupting from the South Tower as the second plane crashed, and people jumping from the buildings. Around him, crowds ran north, unsure what was happening. Daniels ran with them.

He made it home safely, got in touch with his wife and colleagues at McKinsey, and began to process his feelings about a day that changed both the nation and himself.

“There was a huge amount of anger that I felt,” he said. “The fact that we were attacked. …First for the nation, but then for my home: New York City. I was raised in northern New Jersey, but my dad’s from Brooklyn, my mom’s from Long Island. We’ve lived here now for 30 years, raised all our kids here. It’s a very deep connection.”

As Daniels and the nation mourned the 2,977 people killed on September 11, 2001, the experience spurred him to make a career change to do something to help New York. In 2005, he became the president and CEO of the September 11 Memorial & Museum. He led the organization through years of controversy and emotionally charged debate, raised the money to build the memorial and museum at Ground Zero, navigated relationships with families, community groups and other deeply invested stakeholders, and built the team that ultimately opened both to the public. He remained in the role through the end of 2016, the year marking the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

“For me, and I think for most of my team back then, it was an experience of a lifetime,” he said. “It was super emotional—though the weight of responsibility, especially for me, was crushing with the amount of scrutiny and endless expectation. But, putting that all aside, it was still 100% a privilege above all of that to be involved.”

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Right Place, Right Time

Daniels was 33 when he started running the group behind the museum and memorial. He was a lawyer who had been a business consultant, and only a little foundation management experience.

After the terrorist attacks, Daniels left McKinsey and started working for the Robin Hood Foundation, which does philanthropic work in New York. But he also paid attention to what was being done to commemorate the attacks of 9/11 and remember the victims.

He remembers hearing about the creation of the group now known as the September 11 Memorial & Museum Foundation, and wanted to get in as it was being formed. He used a connection to get an interview with Gretchen Dykstra, the organization’s first president, and Daniels said she originally wanted to hire him as her chief of staff. However, the board advised her they weren't going to fund a chief of staff position. So Daniels tried the next best thing: Offering himself as general counsel.

“I was totally unqualified to be a general counsel,” he said. “I was a corporate acquisition finance lawyer. But I joined as a general counsel. I started basically one month after the........

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