"Rutgers is in our DNA" - Ken Buren
From left to right: Ken Buren, Class of 1989; Ron Buren, Class of 1959; Christian Buren, Class of 2021.
From sock hops at the College Avenue Gym in the 1950s to rock concerts on Livingston Campus in the 1980s to blockchain meetups at the business school in the 2010s – they were there.
Four generations of the Buren family in New Jersey have attended Rutgers, starting during the depths of the Great Depression.
And their family’s path – from blue-collar jobs at the Singer sewing machine plant in Elizabeth to high-stakes crypto trading in Hong Kong -- holds a mirror to the history of both Rutgers and the nation through those decades.
It started with Walter Buren, who enrolled in the 1930s during the Great Depression, which at its height saw a U.S. unemployment rate of 25 percent.
“Things were so tough that for lunch he had a candy bar,” said Walter’s son, Ron Buren.
Ron followed his father’s path to Rutgers 20 years later during the Eisenhower era, graduating in 1959 with a degree in economics and business.
“It was either Princeton or Rutgers if you lived in New Jersey,” says Ron, now 87. “Rutgers had more variety of programs, and I couldn’t afford Princeton even if I wanted to go.”
Ron passed his love for Rutgers down to his son, Ken, who was barely in kindergarten when he went Scarlet.
“I actually had a Rutgers jersey with the number ‘5’ on it, which was my age when my father gave it to me,” says Ken, a 1989 graduate of Rutgers College who majored in economics and Japanese. “I was Scarlet all the way.”
By the time Ken’s son, Christian, was coming of age in Scotch Plains, the family tradition was firmly established. The Burens celebrated their alma mater year-round at football and basketball games and alumni gatherings. Ken’s wedding took place at the Kirkpatrick Chapel.
“I heard too much about Rutgers,” Christian quipped.
Nevertheless, Christian wanted to attend a large public university and concluded Rutgers was the best choice. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from Rutgers Business School (RBS) in 2021 with a second major in Chinese from the School of Arts and Sciences.
Christian’s double major brought the Buren family story into the global era. He works in Hong Kong as a quantitative trader for a crypto-focused financial firm.
“The business school helped set me up to get jobs, and the Chinese major played a big part in pushing me toward moving out there,” said Christian, who also earned a master’s degree in quantitative finance from RBS.
Now, when the Burens talk about their Rutgers days, the banter reflects generational shifts in culture. Ron went to sock hops where students danced to “Swing and Sway” by Sammy Kaye. Ken enjoyed campus rock concerts, including one by the Philadelphia band, The Hooters, at the Livingston Campus Gym. Christian recalls a lively mix of gaming, online sports betting, and tech hackathons.
But the generation gaps disappear when they discuss Rutgers’ impact on their lives. The university, they agree, was an engine for economic mobility and an enduring source of community.
“I had a good time, learned a lot, and it set me up for business,” says Ron, who sold mainframe computers for Univac, started his own tax preparation company, and worked on Wall Street as an institutional broker.
Ken and Christian dreamed up maverick projects during their undergraduate years that opened up career possibilities. Ken led the creation of a student-run credit union. Christian was one of the founders of a student-faculty initiative aimed at exploring the world of cryptocurrency.
“One of the critical things I learned at Rutgers was the importance of taking a risk,” said Ken, a sales executive in financial services technology.
Christian agreed.
“All it takes is a group of people to say, ‘Hey, let’s channel the energy and build something.”
From the Great Depression to the Fabulous 50s
Ron Buren says "Rutgers had more variety of programs" than Princeton.Facing the economic hardship of the Depression, Walter Buren had to leave Rutgers before graduating. He went to work as a machinist at the Singer Corp. in Elizabeth where other members of the family worked.
“I know he enjoyed (Rutgers),” Ron said. “The time he had.”
Ron grew up in Linden emulating his father’s work ethic, taking on gigs as a newsboy and stock assistant to raise tuition money. He commuted from home in his first year at Rutgers before raising enough to live on campus for three years.
Ron recalls an era of good times and camaraderie: The football games where you could tap kegs inside the stadium. The classmate who used his engineering skills to build a float that resembled the Marlboro Man and shot out packs of cigarettes. The time when he and a classmate showed up at the office of Professor Alex Balinky, a noted scholar of Marxist economics, to take him up on an academic challenge he made to his class.
Balinky, on the phone and surprised to see the students, listened to their presentation and told them they had earned the credit.
“He said ‘get the hell out of here, I’ll give you the A,” Ron recalls.
After a stint in the U.S. Army, Ron pursued a business career that eventually led to Wall Street working for E.F. Hutton and Jeffries & Co. as a broker.
“The combination of the military and Rutgers gave me the incentive to get into business that I thought I could grow with,” he said. “It’s part of my life experience.”
1980s – Navigating Boom and Bust
Ken Buren, a sales executive in financial services technology said: “One of the critical things I learned at Rutgers was the importance of taking a risk.”Ken Buren had it all figured out in 1985. He’d major in economics and Japanese at Rutgers, with an eye toward the burgeoning global finance trade.
“Then 1987 happened,” he said. “The stock market crashed, and the Japanese economy slowed down drastically.”
But Ken was already at work on a backup plan. Inspired by a Time magazine article on Georgetown University students starting their own campus credit union, Ken and a few Rutgers friends began mounting a similar effort, traveling to Georgetown and to schools in California to gather information from students.
The Rutgers University Student Alumni Federal Credit Union opened in the College Avenue Student Center in 1988, Ken’s junior year.
“It was a student-run bank,” Ken explains. “It taught us how to manage money, underwrite loans, and process transactions.”
It was also fun.
“In order to draw new accounts, we’d sponsor keg parties at the frats,” he said. “We had to explain to people what a credit union was. They thought it was a labor union.”
The effort led to a job after graduation with the Rutgers faculty credit union, which hired him as a manager. Through that job, Ken made connections into the world of financial services technology, where he has built his career.
But the impact of the credit union goes beyond his own life.
A few years ago, Ken was at an event where the speakers included Becky Quick, an alumna and co-host of the CNBC financial news show Squawk Box.
“She said the first thing she did (at Rutgers) was to go into the student center and open an account at the credit union,” Ken said. “I was so proud to hear that.”
2010s: Bitcoin Boom and Asian Adventures
“You had so many different backgrounds and cultures,” says Christian Buren of his experience majoring in Chinese in the School of Arts and Sciences.Christian Buren grew up hearing his father’s stories about credit union. He’d soon show an entrepreneurial streak of his own.
Christian’s first year at Rutgers coincided with the bitcoin boom.
“My friends and I were like, ‘what’s the best way to do this? Trade on our own?” he recalled. “Of course, no one had a lot of money.”
They approached the RBS leadership with a proposal to bring blockchain education to the business school community through a mix of guest speakers, lectures, special courses and travel opportunities to attend conferences.
The Rutgers Business School Blockchain Hub was born.
Meanwhile, his Chinese major was taking him to worlds far beyond New Jersey.
“You had so many different backgrounds and cultures,” he said of the mix of scholars and students he met. “You had people from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong speaking different dialects; then you had American-born Chinese, and finally people like me who were just interested in studying Chinese.”
A Study Abroad trip to China’s provincial capitals was influential in ways he never expected. Several years later he met with the manager of a Hong Kong trading office who was visiting New York.
“He was from one of the Chinese provinces I visited,” Christian said. “So, we started talking about the hundred different type of noodles they make, and very local stuff that you would only know if you were there.”
Christian soon moved to Hong Kong, where he’s taking Cantonese classes to complement his Mandarin.
“Rutgers prepared me very well for the world,” he said.
A Fifth Generation?
Working in finance, Christian Buren is used to pressure. But the Rutgers tradition in his family brings its own share of stress, he jokes.
“You have four male Burens who have gone to Rutgers,” he notes. “So not only do I have to have a son, but he also has to go to Rutgers.
“That’s something to think about!”
Ron and Ken don’t seem too worried.
“Rutgers is in our DNA,” Ken said. “It’s part of who we are.”
Meanwhile they’re proud of how their alma mater has flourished since their undergraduate days.
“To be a Big 10 school is amazing,” Ron said. “I am just dying to beat Ohio State.”
“We’re going up in the (academic) rankings, which gives us a lot of pride,” Ken adds.
Ken and Ron are particularly impressed by how far and wide the state university of New Jersey is now known.
“I travel from sales and obviously Christian is overseas, but everywhere we go now, people know Rutgers,” he said.