When incoming chair of the Board of Trustees, David Rubenstein, Trinity ’70, was young, he consistently borrowed and read the maximum number of books that his public library allowed. He loved reading because, even from his room in a working class neighborhood of Baltimore, books could show him the world.
These days, one of Duke’s libraries has his name on it, and he is more likely to buy books than to borrow them. Some of his favorite purchases include original copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Luckily for the world, Rubenstein likes to share.
“I’m not against people putting things in their home, but I want people to see these, so I put them in the Smithsonian and the National Archives,” he said.
Rubenstein was calling from his car while driving to Dulles International Airport from the Library of Congress, where he had organized a dinner discussion for Republican and Democratic congressmen and senators to come together and talk about Thomas Jefferson.
He was about to fly to Minneapolis, Minn. for work. He no longer needs books to take him around the world, because he travels about 260 days each year as co-CEO of global investment giant the Carlyle Group, which had total assets of $31.6 billion at the end of 2012.
Despite Rubenstein’s many accomplishments, the multibillionaire noted that he would have never imagined that his life would round out this way as a high school student.
“If people from our class were picking who would be chairman of the Board of Trustees, I don’t think I would have gotten a lot of votes in 1970,” Rubenstein said. “I wasn’t first in my class, I wasn’t a star athlete, but I got lucky and that’s how life works.”
Rubenstein’s childhood friend, Steve Baron, corroborated this sense of surprise.
“I wish I could come up with something that said, ‘This guy is going to be one of the most successful businessmen in America,’” said Baron, who now directs mental health for the District of Columbia. “I don’t have that memory.”
Rubenstein and Baron became friends at some point after Bar Mitzvah age, Baron recalled. They attended high school together at Baltimore City College and participated in the Lancers Boys Club, a sports and culture club for teenagers organized by former Baltimore judge Robert Hammerman. The Lancers’ Friday evening meetings frequently featured speakers from accomplished public service backgrounds.
The two used to pass the time at Colts games—the football team was stationed in Baltimore back then—but Baron eventually noticed a change in Rubenstein’s work ethic.
“He became very focused about 11th grade on academics, almost on par with a driven athlete,” Baron said. “Up to that point, I think he was a little more fun-loving, but he got very serious and very focused, and look where it’s taken him.”
At that point, Baron said, Rubenstein became one of the hardest workers around, racking up hours on hours studying in the library.
“He probably knew he wanted to go somewhere and knew it would take a lot of work, and he was willing to put in a lot of work,” Baron suggested.
If hard work alone sufficed, though, there would be many more billionaires in the world.
Rubenstein listed hard work first among his core skills for success in business, but he added that work volume goes hand in hand with personal engagement.
“Nobody ever achieved anything great working nine to five, five days a week,” he said. “If you’re going do something with your life, find something you really enjoy.”
Rubenstein applied himself to several different passions through the years. When he applied to college at age 16, his father was working in a post office, and his mother worked in a retail store. Duke offered the largest scholarship, so he went there, even though he had never set foot on campus. While he was a student, Rubenstein worked in the library to help pay the remaining tuition while he pursued a degree in political science.
After graduating magna cum laude from Duke, he went on to law school at the University of Chicago. A few years later, he headed to Capitol Hill to work for Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind., but when Bayh’s 1976 bid for the Democratic presidential primary fell through, Rubenstein began work on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign.
Carter’s campaign fared better, and Rubenstein landed a spot in the White House as Carter’s deputy domestic policy advisor at the ripe young age of 27.
From there, Rubenstein ticks off the steps in his career with almost scientific matter-of-factness. Carter lost to Reagan, and he was out of a job. He practiced law for a few years. And then:
“In 1987, I started a small private equity or buyout firm in D.C.,” Rubenstein said. “I am today co-CEO of the Carlyle group. That firm has succeeded sufficiently well such that I am in a position to give away money.”
For a bit of context, Forbes pegged Rubenstein’s net worth at $3 billion as of March. But Rubenstein has always been understated, said another childhood friend and Lancers alumnus, Kurt Schmoke, who served as mayor of Baltimore for 12 years.
“He’s very, very thorough in whatever he does, but I’ve never found him to be a publicity seeker,” said Schmoke, who is now vice president and general counsel of Howard University.
As for why he left government and the legal profession, Rubenstein insists he wasn’t too successful there.
“Jimmy Carter didn’t get re-elected and I helped get the inflation rate up to 19 percent, so there wasn’t a lot of demand for me to go back,” he said.
With Carlyle, though, Rubenstein had a strategic advantage in being the first buyout firm in Washington and using his knowledge of the territory to focus on companies that work with the federal government, in order to buy and trade them better than a firm in New York might. Since then, The Carlyle Group has invested $89 billion over 26 years with a return of about 30 percent, he said. They now oversee 210 companies, managing about $175 billion in assets from 34 offices around the world.
Rubenstein has applied himself to giving away money with a diligence akin to his professional pursuits. He has given more than $50 million to Duke over the years. A Sanford School of Public Policy building and Duke’s rare book and manuscript library bear his name. Since May 2012, Rubenstein has given $10 million more to Sanford, $10 million to the Athletics Department and $15 million for the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. He also co-chairs the Duke Forward capital campaign, which aims to raise $3.25 billion by 2017.
Outside of Duke, Rubenstein said he is involved in some 30 nonprofit boards as well as capital campaigns at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy School of Government and the Trust For the National Mall. He serves as the principal underwriter for the annual National Book Festival in D.C. He donated $7.5 million to match Congress’ contribution to repair the Washington Monument after damage from an earthquake in 2011.
Even with his national and international commitments, Schmoke said, Rubenstein has not lost touch with those with whom he grew up.
“Dave was inducted into his high school’s hall of fame, and he treated that as one of the highest awards he received in his entire life,” Schmoke said. “He remains attached to his roots."
Of the many causes he has chosen to champion, though, Rubenstein seems to hold Duke in a special standing.
“I would like to be chairman not because I want to preside over 16 board meetings or just hold the position, but because I want to make Duke an even better school than it already is,” he said. “Duke was very good to me, and Duke is an important national resource. If Duke does well it will be good for the country.”
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