Robert F. Smith -The Little Known Black Billionaire

Robert F. Smith -The Little Known Black Billionaire 

Robert frederick smith born December 1, 1962 is an American businessman, investor and philanthropist. A former chemical engineer and investment banker, he is the founder, chairman and CEO of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. Smith was ranked by Forbes in 2017 as the 226th richest person in America, the wealthiest black person on the list before Oprah Winfrey. He was #688 on Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of US$3 billion. In 2017, Smith was named by Forbes as one of the 100 greatest living business minds.

 In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm of which he is the principal founder, chairman and chief executive. Vista has over $26 billion in cumulative capital commitments. Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology sectors. Among Vista’s portfolio companies are Finastra, TIBCO, Solera, Infloblox, EagleView, Lithium, Kibo, Cvent, and Newscyle.
In 2017, Vista Equity Partners was reported to have $30 billion under management.and Robert F. Smith was named as Private Equity International's 2016 Game Changer of the Year.
January 2015, Vista Equity Partners was named the best performing private equity firm for the previous ten years, by the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg.Preqin, a consulting firm that tracks the industry, reports that Vista’s third fund returned $2.46 for every dollar invested, better than every other big fund raised between 2006 and 2010, the boom years for private equity.
In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion, its largest fund to date.

 Smith was named as one of the "Philanthropy 50" by the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2017. In May 2017, The Giving Pledge announced that Smith had joined its ranks as the only African-American philanthropist.
Smith is the board chairman of Carnegie Hall; he is the first African American to hold that position.
In 2016, Cornell University recognized Smith's leadership by naming the Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering after him.
Among the honors and awards Smith has received are the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Chairman's Award, 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 is the founding director and president of the Fund II Foundation. He is the Chairman of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, serves on the board of overseers of Columbia Business School, as a member of the Cornell Engineering College Council, and a Trustee of the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco.