Five things to know about Morehouse donor Robert F. Smith

Education

Five things to know about Morehouse donor Robert F. Smith

By Rachel Siegel
The Washington Post

Updated5/20/2019 9:30 AM

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• Billionaire philanthropist Robert Smith is pictured in 2016. Washington Post

Billionaire Robert F. Smith woke up the crowd at Morehouse College commencement ceremony Sunday when he veered off script to share a surprise: He'd be paying off all the student loans for the Class of 2019′s nearly 400 graduates.

There was a moment of stunned silence before the grads and their families burst into a joyous applause. Within minutes, praise for Smith spread beyond Morehouse and turned into one of the weekend's most inspiring stories.

The billionaire tech executive and philanthropist has kept under the radar much of his career, even in Austin, where he lives and works. He rarely grants interviews and is so low-profile that when the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture put a call out for major donors in 2013, the museum's directors wondered, "Who is this Robert F. Smith?" They got their answer in spectacular fashion.

Here are five things you need to know about Robert F. Smith:

A knack for computers led to his fortune

As a junior in high school, Smith landed an internship at Bell Labs -- by calling the company every week for five months until he got a slot. Smith tinkered with computers during his summer and Christmas breaks, and went on study chemical engineering at Cornell. He earned an MBA from Columbia, followed by an investment banking job at Goldman Sachs. After advising billion-dollar mergers for tech companies like Microsoft and Apple, he left Goldman to found Vista Equity Partners 2000. He is still the chairman and CEO.

The firm invests in software and data companies and now has more than $46 billion in assets, according to Forbes. As of Monday, Forbes put Smith's net worth at $5 billion. He is the nation's richest black man.

Major donor to the National Museum of African American History and Culture

Before the museum opened, Smith pledged a $20 million gift (behind Oprah's $21 million pledge). In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post in 2016, Smith said he had become afraid of escalating racial tensions that threatened the very opportunities once sought by him and his parents. Smith specifically pointed to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest after Freddie Gray's funeral in Baltimore.

"The vision I was sold as a kid is unraveling. I see the little tears in the fabric of society every day. This cannot be," Smith told The Post.

Smith's donation to the African American history museum was earmarked to digitize photographs, videos and music -- and help foster an interactive experience for a 21st-century museum. The gift also allows the museum to act as a hub to archive photographs from other institutions, like museums, funeral homes or personal collections.

"We wanted it to be a living, interactive museum where we tell our own stories of ourselves our way," Smith said at the time.

Other major donations

Before Sunday's graduation speech, Smith had donated $1.5 million to Morehouse for scholarships and a new park. In 2016, he gifted $50 million to Cornell University for its chemical and biomolecular engineering school, and to support black and female engineering students. (Cornell renamed the school after Smith.)

In 2017, Smith also put his name on The Giving Pledge -- a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to donate most of their wealth.

A musical upbringing

Smith grew up in a mostly black neighborhood in Denver. Both of his parents had doctorates in education and insisted that the house be filled with music -- be it a live show on the house's piano or Leontyne Price's arias on the stereo. Smith brought that early musical influence to his eventual tech career.

"A beautifully written software code is a lyrical concerto," he told The Post in 2016.

Smith was also the first African American to be named chairman of Carnegie Hall in New York in 2016.

An under-the-radar personal life ... in some ways

Though Smith has largely stayed out of the spotlight, he lives it up in other ways. In 2015, during his nuptials to actress and former Playboy model Hope Dworaczyk on the Amalfi Coast, the wedding singers included John Legend, Seal and Brian McKnight.

His love of music is reflected in the names of two of his sons, Hendrix and Legend -- an homage to music icons Jimi Hendrix and John Legend.

Smith reportedly owns one of Elton John's old pianos.

Above is from:  https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20190520/five-things-to-know-about-morehouse-donor-robert-f-smith

Civic Federation says Pritzker budget plan is ‘workable’

By Doug Finke
State Capitol Bureau

Posted May 16, 2019 at 12:01 AMUpdated May 16, 2019 at 3:02 PM

The Civic Federation said Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s budget plan for next year “represents a workable short-term plan to move Illinois forward” in a report that will be issued Thursday.

The budget watchdog group said, however, it still has “significant concerns” the fiscal year 2020 spending plan relies on aggressive estimates for revenues and also may not adequately provide a long-term solution to the state’s bill backlog and pension funding.

“As proposed, the budget represents a relatively rickety financial bridge, though it has been significantly strengthened in recent days,” said Civic Federation President Laurence Msall in a statement. “The General Assembly is approaching the deadline to pass several components upon which this budget and the governor’s long-term plan rely and revenue projections attached to many of the proposals remain uncertain.”

Consequently, the federation’s Institute for Illinois’ Fiscal Sustainability, which prepared the budget analysis, suggested Pritzker and lawmakers have a backup plan ready that doesn’t short the pensions or further run up the bill backlog.

The federation gave Pritzker credit for using a projected increase in state tax collections next year to pay down pension debt. Pritzker’s original budget plan called for the state to extend the payment schedule to the pension systems by seven years, shorting the systems by hundreds of millions of dollars. The federation said it couldn’t support that idea “because it would have further jeopardized the financial condition of Illinois’ severely underfunded retirement systems.”

The federation said it is opposed to Pritzker’s idea of borrowing $2 billion to put into pensions because it will have a minimal effect on the pension debt while exposing the state to interest rate risk.

Pritzker deserves credit for introducing new revenues, the federation said, while also sounding a note of caution. Pritzker is banking on revenue from recreational marijuana and legalized sports betting to help balance next year’s budget. However, with just two weeks left in the spring session, both of those proposals remain works in progress that could be difficult to pass.

Pritzker has also put a lot of reliance on approval of a graduated income tax as a long-term solution to the state’s financial problems. However, the earliest that could be implemented is 2021, assuming voters approve the idea during the 2020 election.

The federation said the governor and legislature might be better off focusing on passing a budget by the end of May and leaving a capital plan — and the tax hikes to pay for it — until another time.

As it has before, the federation repeated its suggestions for the state to finally resolve its financial problems, including limiting spending growth, expanding the sales tax to some services and taxing the same retirement income that is subject to federal taxation. Pritzker has said he’s opposed to taxing retirement income.

Contact Doug Finke: doug.finke@sj-r.com, 788-1527, twitter.com/dougfinkesjr.

Above is from:  https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190516/civic-federation-says-pritzker-budget-plan-is-workable?rssfeed=true