Editor’s Note: The David Eccles School of Business is celebrating Black History Month by sharing the successes of Black business leaders who have made big impacts in the business world.
Robert F. Smith is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, which has offices in Austin, Texas, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, and Oakland, California. Smith is in charge of Vista Equity Partners’ investment strategy and decisions, investor relations, and firm governance. Smith founded the firm in 2000, after several other professional and personal achievements.
Smith was born in Colorado to two parents who both held Ph.D.’s and earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University. He then earned an MBA concentrated on finance and marketing from Columbia Business School with honors. After graduating, he joined Kraft General Foods, where he earned two U.S. and two European patents.
He then moved to Goldman Sachs tech investment banking in 1994, first living and working in New York and then in Silicon Valley. He was the first person in San Francisco at Goldman Sachs to focus only on tech mergers and acquisitions. He both executed and advised on more than $50 billion in merger and acquisitions with companies such as Apple, eBay, Microsoft, Texas Instruments and Yahoo.
In addition to his professional accomplishments, Smith is a global philanthropist who has earned several honors and recognition from several entities. In 2017, he became the first African American to sign on to The Giving Pledge. His donation of $20 million was the largest individual gift to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“I am showing the current generations of African Americans they can do it, too. So the next generation can go even higher,” he said.