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. In 2018, Smith was ranked byForbes as the 163rd richest person in America.[1] He was No. 480 on Forbes 2018 list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of US$4.4 billion.[1] Smith was also included in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment List.[2] In 2017, Smith was named by Forbes as one of the 100 greatest living business minds.[3] In a 2018 cover story, Forbes declared Smith the wealthiest African-American, surpassing Oprah Winfrey.[4]
Early life[edit]
Robert F. Smith was born a fourth generation Coloradoan to Dr. William Robert Smith and Dr. Sylvia Myma Smith, who were both school teachers with PhDs.[5] He grew up in a predominantly African American, middle-class neighborhood in Denver. He attended Carson Elementary School and attended East High School in Denver.[5]
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 forsemiconductors.[6][7] At Cornell he became a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha.
After working at Air Products & Chemicals, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and later at Kraft General Foods as a chemical engineer,[5]where he earned two United States and two European patents, he attended Columbia Business School.[8] Smith earned an MBA with honors specializing in finance and marketing.[5] From 1994 to 2000, he joined Goldman Sachs in technology investment banking, first in New York Cityand 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 in the Goldman Sachs San Francisco office to focus solely on technology mergers and acquisitions.
Vista Equity Partners[edit]
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. As of 2019, Vista has over $46 billion in cumulative capital commitments, owns over 50 software companies and has 60,000 employees worldwide,[9][10] making it the fourth largest enterprise software company after Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.[11] Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology sectors. Among Vista's portfolio companies are Finastra, TIBCO, Solera, Infoblox, Mediaocean, Vertafore, Ping Identity, Lithium, Cvent, and Datto.
In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion.[12]
In January 2015, Vista Equity Partners was named the best performing private equity firm for the previous 10 years, according to the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg.[13] 
reqin, 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.[7]
In 2017, Vista Equity Partners was reported to have $30 billion under management,[14] and Smith was named as Private Equity International's 2016 Game Changer of the Year.[15]
Philanthropy and public positions[edit]
Smith is the board chairman of Carnegie Hall; he is the first African American to hold that position.[16]
Smith is the founding director and president of the Fund II Foundation.[17] Under his leadership, Fund II Foundation has invested in organizations such as Cornell, UNCF, National Park Foundation, Susan G. Komen, and Global Wildlife Conservation, among many others.[18]
He is the chairman of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights,[19] serves on the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, as a member of the Cornell Engineering College Council,[20] and a Trustee of the Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco.[21]
In 2018, Smith was the largest individual donor at the City of Hope Gala, earmarking funds towards prostate cancer treatment for black men and for breast cancer research for black women.[22] Smith also donated $2.5 million to the Prostate Cancer Foundation to advance prostate cancer research among African-American men.[23] Also in 2018, Smith donated $1 million to the Cultural Performance Center at the Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park in Harlem, which was subsequently named the Robert Frederick Smith Center for Performing Arts in recognition of his gift.[24]
Smith was named as one of the "Philanthropy 50" by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2017.[25] In May 2017, The Giving Pledge announced that Smith had joined its ranks as its first African-American signatory.[26] Smith is a member of the board of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, the only authentically preserved home of a jazz musician in the country, which manages the Louis Armstrong Research Collections, the largest single jazz musician archive in the world. With Smith’s leadership at the Fund II Foundation, the museum has digitized the entire collection Armstrong left behind and made it available to the public.[27]
In 2016, Cornell University recognized Smith's leadership by naming the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering after him.[28]
Among the honors and awards Smith has received are the Candle in Business and Philanthropy Award from Morehouse College,[29] the International Medical Corps Humanitarian of the Year Award,[30] Ebony’s John H. Johnson Award,[31] the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Chairman's Award,[32] 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[33] and an honorary doctorate from Morehouse College.[34]
In May 2019, he announced his intention to pay off the entire student loan debt of the 2019 Morehouse College graduating class of 396 students.[35][36] "This is my class," he told the graduating seniors, "and I know my class will pay this forward."[34][37] He had previously donated $1.5 million to the school in January 2019, to be used for scholarships and a park.[38]
Personal life[edit]
Smith married his first wife, fellow Cornell alum Suzanne McFayden Smith, in 1988. They were married for 22 years before they separated in 2010; their divorce was finalized in 2014. Smith married Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy playmate, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor, on July 25, 2015.[39][40] He has three children with his first wife, and two with his second. Smith owns a home in Austin, Texas,[41] a home in Malibu, California that he bought for $19.5 million from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid Foster, and a home in New York City he bought for $59 million.[42]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Smith_(investor)
