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Education supporter and advocate for HBCUs
About Robert F. SmithA known entrepreneur and philanthropist, is also the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners. both focus on the innovation of forces working together, whether it includes his engineering background influencing his private equity work with Vista, or his philanthropic efforts to lift up African American communities for generations to come.
Smith is no stranger to hard work, often and in . Growing up in a family of educators in Denver, he was a high-achieving student who pursued and was granted an internship at the prestigious Bell Labs as a high school student. He then went on to earn an and an MBA at Columbia University. In his early career, he used his engineering background to earn four patents and gain insight into the industry. After he earned his MBA, he went to work for Goldman Sachs, focusing on partnerships between major corporations in Silicon Valley, including IBM and Apple. In 2000, he left Goldman to create his own , which focuses on enterprise software companies and their growth through best practices.
With a lifetime of business success, , including time on many boards including as the Chairman of Carnegie Hall, as a Founding Partner of the REFORM Alliance, as a member of the , and as a Member of the Cornell Engineering College Council.
Smith鈥檚 achievements have been noted by awards including the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and an induction into the Texas Business Hall of Fame in 2019, as well as the UNCF鈥檚 President鈥檚 Award that same year. He also was named to , to Forbes鈥� 100 Greatest Living Business Minds and he also received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Chair鈥檚 Award in 2016.
After his Morehouse donation, Smith worked on broadening his reach to make lasting change for Black and minority students who frequently lack the generational wealth to pay for college. Students saddled with unmanageable loan payments after college often were sacrificing their freedom of job choice in order to prioritize repayment. That stress was limiting the opportunities that they had worked so hard to achieve.
"By addressing the financial stress of college and providing students with resources and community, we can finally broaden the talent pipeline and create a more diverse and thriving economy,鈥� said Smith.
Smith also knows that debt isn鈥檛 all that matters, and it鈥檚 also about a comprehensive approach that works with students and their institutions to provide more support to help them succeed. This holistic approach, working in partnership with the schools that are shepherding students into their livelihoods, that Smith hopes can make lasting change. It鈥檚 a tall order, but one Smith and Student Freedom Initiative are confident they can achieve. And they鈥檙e not the only ones excited by the program鈥檚 prospects.
鈥淩obert F. Smith and his team have put a tremendous amount of work in developing a leading edge, innovative program to partner with Tuskegee and other HBCUs,鈥� said Tuskegee's 8th President Dr. Lily McNair.
There are multiple educational initiatives that Smith has supported, including internships at the , and internX via the Fund II Foundation, of which Smith is the founding director and President. The internX program matches thousands of students with internships every year and it鈥檚 utilized with Student Freedom Initiative to connect promising students at Initiative-participating schools with corporate connections in their field of study. Smith knows that those connections, made as early as possible in someone鈥檚 career, can make a real difference in their overall career trajectory.
鈥淚 think [internships] are the opportunities that create an understanding and opportunity for these young kids and, frankly, the companies who they work for to get to know each other, create exposure and experience, and potentially long term, economic opportunities in terms of full-time jobs,鈥� Smith said.
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