SCOTT COOK

$3.5

BILLION  SELF-MADE SCORE: * SOURCE: SOFTWARE AGE: 67 RESIDENCE: WOODSIDE, CA PHILANTHROPY SCORE:

Long before Cook became chairman of financial software giant Intuit, as a college student he was president of the University of Southern California’s moribund ski club. Showing early business savvy, he says he turned it into the biggest ski club in the state. (In this 1975 shot, he and sister Sharon take a break from the

slopes.) His plan was to get an economics Ph.D., but his stint as ski club president, in part, persuaded him to apply to Harvard Business School. “I came to conclude you could do more to improve people’s lives running large organizations and in business,” Cook says.