Billionaire pays it forward to Morehouse
Graduates of Morehouse College’s class of 2019 received a gift fellow college students wished could come true: zero college debt.
During Morehouse’s commencement, billionaire Robert F. Smith told graduates he would create a grant to pay off their student loan debts.
“You great Morehouse men are bound only by the limits of your own conviction and creativity,” Smith said during his address.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the gift to the 400 graduating seniors amounts to about $40 million.
Smith already had pledged $1 million to Morehouse in January to create the Robert Frederick Smith Scholars Program. Here’s what you need to know about Smith:
He runs an investment firm
Smith is the founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm with offices in several cities including San Francisco, New York City and Austin, Texas. According to its website, Vista has $46 billion in capital committed to companies specializing in data, software and technology. According to Forbes, Vista is one of the bestperforming private equity firms, with annualized returns of 22% since it was founded. Before founding Vista, Smith worked in tech investment banking with Goldman Sachs, reads a bio on the firm’s website.
He is worth $5 billion
Smith ranks 355th on Forbes’ Billionaires 2019 list. A profile of Smith published by Forbes in 2018 said he was the nation’s wealthiest African American.
His gift is among several philanthropic efforts
Along with his gifts to Morehouse, in 2016, Smith pledged $50 million to his alma mater Cornell University toward the school’s college of engineering.
Smith also is the only African American to sign the Giving Pledge, an initiative created by billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett aimed at urging the world’s billionaires to donate their wealth toward charitable causes.
“I will never forget that my path was paved by my parents, grandparents and generations of African Americans whose names I will never know,” Smith wrote. “Their struggles, their courage, and their progress allowed me to strive and achieve. My story would only be possible in America, and it is incumbent on all of us to pay this inheritance forward.”