Robert Frederick Smith (born December 1, 1962) is an African American businessman, investor and philanthropist. A former chemical engineer and investment banker, he is the founder, chairman and CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. Smith was ranked by Forbes in 2016 as the 274th richest person in America, the second wealthiest African American on the list after Oprah Winfrey. He was #688 on Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of US$3 billion.
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Early life
Robert F. Smith was born a fourth generation Coloradoan to two school teacher parents with PhDs. He grew up in a predominantly African American, middle class neighborhood in Denver, and attended a newly-integrated school.
When he was an infant, his mother carried him at the March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.
In high school, he applied for an internship at Bell Labs but was told the program was intended for college students. Smith persisted, calling every day. When a student from M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a reliability test for semiconductors.
Smith earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University. At Cornell he became a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha.
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Career
After working at Kraft General Foods as a chemical engineer, where he earned two United States and two European patents, he attended Columbia Business School. Smith graduated with honors. From 1994-2000, he joined Goldman Sachs in technology investment banking, first in New York City and then in Silicon Valley. He advised on over $50 billion in merger and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. He was the first person at Goldman Sachs to focus solely on technology mergers and acquisitions and foreign countries.
Vista Equity Partners
In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm of which he is the principal founder, chairman and chief executive. Vista has over $26 billion in cumulative capital commitments. Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology sectors. Among Vista's portfolio companies are Misys, TIBCO, Solera, Active Network, Bullhorn, Omnitracs, Kibo, and Newscyle.
In January 2015, Vista Equity Partners was named the best performing private equity firm for the previous ten years, by the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg. Preqin, a consulting firm that tracks the industry, reports that Vista's third fund returned $2.46 for every dollar invested, better than every other big fund raised between 2006 and 2010, the boom years for private equity.
In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion, its largest fund to date.
Philanthropy and public positions
Smith has received the Reginald F. Lewis Achievement Award, the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Robert Toigo Foundation, and the Ripple of Hope Award from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Smith was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of International Affairs from American University's School of International Service. He founded Project Realize - termed "Free Market Philanthropy" - in order to combine the best elements of the American free enterprise system with the core American ideals of giving back and lifting others up.
Smith is the founding director and president of the Fund II Foundation. He is the Chairman of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, serves on the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, as a member of the Cornell Engineering College Council, and a Trustee of the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Smith is a Board Member of Carnegie Hall.
Smith was named the board chairman of Carnegie Hall; he is the first African American to hold that position.
Personal life
In July 2015, Smith married Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy Playmate, model, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor. He has five children, three from a previous marriage and two with Dworaczyk. Their first child, Hendrix Robert Smith, was born in December 2014. Smith resides in Austin, Texas.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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