‘I Thought It Was Over’: The MBA Who Beat A Death Sentence — And Got Back On Wall Street

Benjamin Arinze didn’t expect to be standing in a Muay Thai ring in Thailand, fists raised, sweat dripping, adrenaline peaking — especially not two years after being carried up and down the stairs by his father, his body wracked by a mysterious illness doctors believed might be fatal.

But there he was — under the lights, in a packed stadium in Phuket, his name printed on posters outside every 7-Eleven in town. “I had a terminal diagnosis. I had nothing left. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of bed again, let alone fight in Thailand or walk the stage at Cornell,” he says. “This was something out of a movie.”

That movie is now his real life. On May 24, Arinze will graduate with an MBA from Cornell’s SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. He’ll return to New York City this summer with a full-time investment banking offer from Guggenheim Partners — and a story that defies every expectation.

A FAST-TRACK CAREER — AND A SUDDEN COLLAPSE

Arinze was always focused. Born in Nigeria and raised in Voorhees, New Jersey, he was determined to make it to Wall Street yet chose to study at Drexel University, fully aware it wasn’t a traditional finance pipeline. “Drexel wasn’t a Wall Street feeder, so I knew early on that I’d need to work harder — and I always planned to go back for an MBA if I wanted to boost my career and grow my network,” he says. He earned a spot at William Blair in Chicago, grinding his way into investment banking and learning the business from the inside.

Two years later, he landed what he thought was his dream job — a private equity role in New York City. It was November 2021.

His life felt like it was just starting. “I had the job. I was in Manhattan. I had a plan.”

Two months later, as he was preparing to start his new job, his fiancée — Hannah, then his girlfriend — first noticed something was off. “She told me I was limping on my right leg. I didn’t believe her. I thought maybe I’d twisted something.”

Then came stranger symptoms: mistyping emails, forgetting words, struggling to hold objects. “One morning I woke up and didn’t know where I was,” he says. “I was getting lost in my own neighborhood. I couldn’t read a paragraph without losing my place.” Within weeks, he was out of work, unable to function.

A SHOCKING DIAGNOSIS — AND A STEEP DESCENT

Early tests showed nothing. “Everyone thought I was having a mental breakdown,” he says. “They told me to take antidepressants. But I knew something physical was happening. I wasn’t crazy — I could feel my muscles failing.” Eventually, a second neurologist confirmed it: his nerve signals were weakening. Muscles were showing signs of denervation. It pointed to something much worse.

In April 2022, Arinze was told he likely had motor neuron disease — the degenerative category that includes ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was 24. “She said most people live two to five years after diagnosis. She told me, ‘Go home and do what you can, while you can.’”

The next 12 months were brutal. Arinze, 6 foot 2, shrank down to 130 pounds. He couldn’t walk unaided. His father carried him to medical appointments. “I was in bed for almost two years,” he says. “I couldn’t read. I couldn’t hold a cup. I thought I was done.”

A biopsy at Columbia-Presbyterian in late 2022 showed damage — but not ALS. “The nerve tissue looked normal. The muscles were wasting, but the motor nerves were surprisingly healthy,” he says. “That gave me hope. Not answers — but hope.”

THE SLOW CLIMB BACK

Then came a slow — and unexpected — reversal.

In early 2023, Arinze noticed he could hold a toothbrush. Then a cup. Then he could stand. Then walk.

“At first I thought it was a fluke,” he says. “But the improvements kept coming.” His neurologist ran another EMG and was stunned. “She told me, ‘In 40 years, I’ve never seen this before. Your nerves are healing. Somehow, they’re coming back.’”

Doctors now suspect a rare central nervous system virus that temporarily mimicked ALS symptoms. But no clear diagnosis has ever been given. “We don’t know what happened,” Arinze says. “But we know I got better.”

During recovery, he applied to MBA programs — knowing his GMAT score was set to expire. Cornell offered him a full ride. “I had nothing left. I had spent everything. That scholarship is the only reason I was able to go,” he says. “And I was still fragile. I needed a place that would let me heal and grow.”

At Cornell, he rebuilt — physically, mentally, emotionally. He launched a student-led distressed investing and restructuring club, helped found a rowing team, and recruited for top Wall Street jobs. “I wrote every meeting down on sticky notes, including people’s names, because I was afraid I’d forget. I trained my brain like a muscle.”

He also made deep friendships — especially with classmate Nathan Gorman, who drove with him to New York for recruiting trips, splitting gas and hotel costs, and later became a groomsman for his upcoming wedding. “We’d do mock interviews on the drive,” Arinze says. “He believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”

By summer 2024, Arinze had secured internships from several top investment banks; ultimately he joined Guggenheim’s restructuring group in New York. “I wanted to prove that I wasn’t just back — I was better,” he says. “And I did.”

4 MONTHS IN SINGAPORE — AND A FIGHT WORTH TRAINING FOR

Cornell offered second-year students a chance to study abroad. Arinze chose the National University of Singapore, in a city he had dreamed of visiting since childhood. “When I was sick, I’d literally have dreams of being in Singapore. Then I’d wake up in bed. I thought I’d never see it.”

He arrived in January 2025. Classes ran Monday to Wednesday. The rest of the week was his. That’s when he wandered into a gym in the city’s Holland Village neighborhood called Rebel Muay Thai. “I asked the coach, Melvin, if it was possible to train for a real fight before I left in April,” Arinze says. “He laughed. Most fighters train for years. But he said we’d see.”

Arinze trained obsessively, first in Singapore, then in Muay Thai camps across Southeast Asia. He sparred in Bali, Cambodia, and Bangkok. “I fell in love with it,” he says. “The discipline, the focus. It reminded me of rehab — one day at a time, one small win at a time.”

In late February, he traveled to Phuket and walked into a gym run by a former UFC star. After a round of sparring, the coach snapped a photo, and within hours Arinze’s face was on fight posters across town. “I was in 7-Eleven buying water and saw myself on the wall,” he says. “It felt like a fever dream.”

On March 1, he entered the ring in front of a roaring crowd. He won the first round, but fatigue set in by the second. “I was exhausted. My opponent saw it and turned up the pressure,” he says. “The ref called it off. TKO.” But Arinze had fought — and in the eyes of those who knew his journey and his friends who had flown in from Cornell to support him, he had already won.

His father watched live from New Jersey. “He was overcome with emotion,” Arinze says. “He used to carry me. Now he was watching me fight on TV.”

GRADUATION — AND GRATITUDE

Arinze returned to Singapore for final classes, then traveled briefly to Malaysia, back to Bali, then the Philippines and Hawaii, where he met his fiancée for a wedding. “When I landed back in Chicago, my fiancée had a Cornell cake waiting for me,” he says. “It felt like the end of a journey — and the start of another.”

Now, as he looks ahead to his next role at Guggenheim, which offered him a full-time role after his 2024 internship, Arinze is reflecting on life after Johnson — and what it means to give back. He helped build two student organizations at Cornell: the Johnson Rowing Club and the Johnson Restructuring and Distressed Investing Group. He mentored first-years. He showed up. “My rule is simple: leave a place better than you found it.”

He also left something else behind: a roadmap for others who may one day wake up, like he did, not knowing where they are — and wondering if life will ever feel normal again.

“I used to think my life was over — that I had nothing left,” he says. “Now, I know how wrong I was. Life didn’t just get better. It got amazing.”

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