Smith, Robert F.

Impact on the world

Built Vista Equity Partners into one of the largest enterprise software investors in the world, surpassing Oprah Winfrey in 2018 to become the wealthiest African American with a net worth exceeding $10 billion, and became the first Black signatory of the Giving Pledge after famously paying off the entire 2019 Morehouse College graduating class's student loan debt.

Life & background

A chemical engineer by training with two U.S. and two European patents to his name, Smith persisted as a teenager until Bell Labs accepted him into a college-only summer internship program, later working in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs before founding Vista Equity Partners in 2000. Vista grew into one of the top-performing private equity firms focused on enterprise software, managing well over $100 billion in assets, and Smith's fortune surpassed Oprah Winfrey's in 2018 to make him the wealthiest African American. In 2019 he made headlines by pledging to pay off the entire student loan debt of Morehouse College's graduating class, a $34 million gift, and became the first Black signatory of the Giving Pledge. In 2020 Smith settled one of the largest individual tax fraud cases in U.S. history, agreeing to repay $139 million and cooperate with prosecutors regarding a financial advisor's offshore tax concealment scheme.

Sources

1. BlackPast.org; Britannica Money