Robert Frederick Smith (born December 1, 1962) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.
He graduated from Cornell University with a chemical gineering degree and from Columbia Business School with an MBA, before working as an investmt banker at Goldman Sachs. In 2019, while delivering the commcemt speech at Morehouse College, Smith pledged to pay off the tire $34 million of studt loan debt of all of the members of the 2019 graduating class.
His parts were Dr. William Robert Smith, an elemtary school principal, and Dr. Sylvia Myrna Smith, the principal of George Washington High School, who both had PhDs in education.
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Asked about his mother in 2020, he said: She usually calls me to tell me what I can do a little better.
His maternal grandfather was a postmaster for three post offices in the Washington, D.C. area, and before that while in high school worked in the U.S. Russell Sate Office Building, serving coffee and taking hats and coats in the lounge.
Wh he was an infant, his mother carried him wh he was six months old at the March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech.
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While in high school, he applied for an internship at Bell Labs, but was told the program was intded for college studts. Smith persisted, calling each Monday for five months. Wh a studt from M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a reliability test for semiconductors.
After graduating from Cornell, Smith worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and Air Products & Chemicals. Later, he worked at Kraft Geral Foods as a chemical gineer, and registered two United States and two European patts as the principal invtor.
From 1994 to 2000, after receiving his MBA he worked for investmt bank Goldman Sachs in technology investmt banking. He first worked for it in New York City, and th moved to Silicon Valley in 1997 where he started Goldman's technology-focused merger and acquisitions efforts there.
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In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, an Austin, Texas-based private equity and vture capital firm of which he is the principal founder, chairman, and chief executive.
According to Black terprise magazine, Smith was credited with consisttly gerating a 30% rate of return for his investors from the company's inception through 2020.
In 2018, Smith was included in Vanity Fair's New Establishmt List, which is an annual ranking of individuals who have made impactful business innovations.
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In 2014, Smith became the founding director and presidt of the Fund II Foundation, which has invested in organizations such as Cornell, the National Park Foundation, and Susan G. Kom, while also donating money to causes preserving African-American history and culture, music education, and the vironmt.
That year, he also made a $15 million donation to Columbia Business School to help it expand to its new Manhattanville campus.
In 2018, Smith was the largest individual donor at the City of Hope Gala, which funds prostate cancer treatmt and breast cancer research for black m and wom.
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Also in 2018, Smith donated $1 million to the Cultural Performance Cter at the Dny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Harlem, which was later ramed the Robert Frederick Smith Cter for Performing Arts.
Also in 2018, his Fund II Foundation gave a $2.7 million grant to the Louis Armstrong House Museum, with the grant helping digitize Armstrong's collection to make it available to the public.
On May 19, 2019, during his 2019 commcemt speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black college in Atlanta, Georgia, Smith said he would pay off the tire studt loan debt of the 2019 Morehouse College graduating class of 396 studts, a reported $34M in studt loan debt, including the debt incurred by parts and guardians.
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In a June 2020 report, Time reported the launch of The Studt Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit led by Smith, to befit HBCU studts.
According to Forbes, Smith is the first African-American to sign the Giving Pledge, a commitmt to contribute the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes.
In January 2022, he donated $10 million to Columbia Business School, to fund a scholarship program for studts graduating from historically black colleges and universities, from diverse backgrounds who have overcome significant hardships or challges in their academic pursuits, or who have demonstrated a strong commitmt to gaging principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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In February 2022, Smith’s non-profit organization, the Studt Freedom Initiative, partnered with Prudtial Financial to provide up to $1.8 million in microgrants to studts of HBCUs.
In April 2022, Smith launched the Mount Sinai Robert F. Smith Mobile Prostate Cancer Screing Bus in Harlem, New York, in partnership with Mount Sinai Hospital.
In May 2022, Cornell University announced a $15 million donation from Smith that will provide financial aid to gineering studts from historically underreprested communities. The gift will support an undergraduate scholarship fund to provide at least 7 studts a year from urban high schools with up to $45, 000 in grants, in addition to setting up a graduate fellowship fund to support 12 master’s studts and five doctoral studts who attded historically black colleges and universities.
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In December 2022, taking a stand together against increasing instances of racism and antisemitism in the US, Smith joined New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Reverds Al Sharpton and Conrad Tillard, World Values Network founder and CEO Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Elisha Wiesel to host 15 Days of Light, celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in a unifying holiday ceremony at Carnegie Hall.
Smith said: Wh we unify the souls of our two communities, we can usher in light to banish the darkness of racism, bigotry, and antisemitism.
In the 1990s, businessman Robert T. Brockman approached Smith about creating a private equity fund, and offered to back the initial fund.
Robert F. Smith
As part of the deal, Brockman required an offshore trust be set up to conceal earnings from tax authorities and avoid litigation in US courts.
Brockman also required that the first fund be located in the Cayman Islands, and set aside some of the interest earned to protect him against losses.
According to Smith's later non-prosecution agreemt, Brockman dictated the unique terms and unorthodox structure to the arrangemt and he accepted the offer as a unique business opportunity he eagerly wanted to pursue.
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In October 2020, Smith tered into a non-prosecution agreemt with the United States Departmt of Justice (DOJ), agreeing to assist the DOJ in a separate case against Brockman who was charged that month with what the DOJ called the largest ever tax fraud scheme by a U.S. citiz, and to pay a fine of $139 million.
Smith became the board chairman of Carnegie Hall in 2016, the first African-American to hold that position; he had be a member of the board since 2013.
In April 2020, Governor Greg Abbott named Smith to the Strike Force to Op Texas – a group tasked with finding safe and effective ways to slowly reop the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Published an article highlighting Smith being nominated by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. to serve as executive producer of a series of film and television projects titled The GOAT aimed to tell Mayweather's life story. Mayweather said: “As someone who owns his own brand, I can’t think of better partners than Deon (Deon Taylor), Roxanne (Roxanne Avt Taylor), Robert F. Smith — the wealthiest African American in the world — and Hidd Empire Films, a prolific Black-owned production company.”
In 2018, he received the International Medical Corps Humanitarian of the Year Award, and the Candle in Business and Philanthropy Award from Morehouse College,
In October 2019, Smith received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, which is giv to individuals who have donated private wealth to the public.
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In 1988, Smith married his first wife, fellow Cornell alum Suzanne McFayd. They divorced in 2014. Smith married Hope Dworaczyk, the founder and CEO of skincare company MUTHA, a former Playboy playmate, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor, on July 25, 2015, after she gave birth to their first child in December 2014.
Smith partnered with Matthew Burkett to purchase the historic Lincoln Hills, Colorado property in Gilpin County in 2007 and convert it into an exclusive invitation-only fly fishing club.
In November 2023, Forbes said his net worth was $9.2 billion, and that he was the 78th-richest person in the United States, and the 235th-richest person in the world.This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect rect evts or newly available information. (July 2022 )
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According to the 2021 Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires, Nigerian business magnate Aliko Dangote had a net worth of $11.5 billion and was the world's richest black man.
Other billionaires of African desct on the 2021 Forbes list included Nigerian businessman Mike Aduga with $6.1 billion, American investor Robert Smith with $6 billion, American businessman David Steward with $3.7 billion, American media mogul Oprah Winfrey with $2.7 billion, South African gold magnate Patrice Motsepe with $2.9 billion, Barbadian music artist/trepreur Rihanna with $1.7 billion,
Sports executive Michael Jordan with $1.6 billion, Jamaican-Canadian businessman Michael Lee-Chin with $1.6 billion, Nigerian
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