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The presidency has revealed that black American billionaire, Mr. Robert Smith, is currently sponsoring the education of 24 Chibok schoolgirls, among them, the first set of escapees from Boko Haram at the American University of Nigeria, Yola.
Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu said Smith had offered to pay for the education of the 21 Chibok grils released through negotiations and was offering to take responsibility for all the others “who will hopefully be eventually set free.”
Here are 15 things you need to know about Mr. Smith
Robert Frederick Smith (born December 1, 1962) is an American investor
He was born to two parents with PhDs, who were school teachers
He grew up in a mostly African American, middle class neighborhood in Denver, and attended a newly-integrated school.
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.
He is the founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm with over $26 billion in assets as of September 2016
Smith is ranked by Forbes as the 268th richest person in America, and the second wealthiest African American on the list, trailing only Oprah Winfrey.
He has an estimated net worth of $3 billion USD as of September 2016.
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 for semiconductors.
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Smith trained as a chemical engineer at Cornell University, earning his B.S. in Chemical Engineering
After working at Kraft General Foods, where he earned two United States and two European patents, he attended Columbia Business School, graduating with honors.
From 1994-2000, he joined Goldman Sachs in tech investment banking, first in New York and then in Silicon Valley. As Co-Head of Enterprise Systems and Storage, he executed and advised on over $50B in merger and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. He was the first person at Goldman Sachs to focus solely on Tech M&A and foreign countries
In January 2015, based on its performance over the last 10 years, Vista Equity Partners was named the world’s #1 performing private equity firm, according to the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg
Smith is married to former Playboy Playmate, model, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor Hope Dworaczyk Smith. The couple have one child together, son Hendrix Robert Smith, who was born on December 19, 2014.
Smith has received 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. He founded Project Realize– termed “Free Market Philanthropy”– in order to combine the best elements of the American free enterprise system with the core American ideals of giving back and lifting others up.
Smith was named the Board Chairman of the 125-year-old Carnegie Hall; the first African American to hold that position.
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