“Do something that makes you happy,” David Rubenstein tells the AU audience during an on-campus discussion.
Sean Cudahy
A standing-room-only crowd gathered inside AU’s Constitution Hall on September 21 to hear from a business leader that Kogod Dean David Marchick called an “extraordinary American, investor, philanthropist, and mentor.”
Hosted as part of the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics Distinguished Lecturer Series, students, faculty, and guests from the AU Board of Trustees heard from David Rubenstein—co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, and an acclaimed author, television and podcast host, philanthropist, and lawyer.
Dean Marchick, a Carlyle Group alum himself, served as the event’s moderator and kicked off the discussion with a personal note about Rubenstein’s “intellectual curiosity”—a trait, Marchick said, he admires most about his mentor.
“When you meet him, he’ll ask you rapid-fire questions about your life,” Marchick explained. “And he’ll remember your answers.”
Rubenstein’s proclivity for asking questions is, perhaps, a key reason he’s become well known as an interviewer himself, regularly welcoming prominent guests to The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS, as well as Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein on Bloomberg TV.
He’s directed his thought-provoking questions—injected with some levity—toward Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk, and Kim Kardashian.
“Kim Kardashian has taken a brand and built it from nothing into something,” Rubenstein remarked, countering any surprise about his most recent guest. “She obviously has some talents and skill.”
The son of a career post office worker and World War II veteran, Rubenstein grew up in Baltimore, earning scholarships to study at Duke University for his undergraduate degree and at the University of Chicago for his law degree.
Following two stints as a lawyer and four years serving in the Carter administration, Rubenstein started the Carlyle Group in 1987 after reading that successful entrepreneurs typically start their business between the ages of 28 and 37.
“So, I said I’d better do something,” he explained. “I didn’t like being a lawyer; if you don’t like something, you can’t be good at it."
Nobody ever won a Nobel Prize hating what they do.”
David Rubenstein
Cofounder and Cochairman, Carlyle Group
What followed, of course, was Rubenstein helping to build Carlyle into one of the nation’s most prominent private equity firms, still headquartered in the same Pennsylvania Avenue location of its founding.
Rubenstein told the audience that the company has not been without its well-documented missed opportunities: he listed would-have-been investments into Facebook, Amazon, and Netscape (later acquired by AOL).
Still, Carlyle has close to $400 billion in assets today, and the list of high-caliber Carlyle alums in prominent political posts—or vice versa—is long. Recent departures from the company include Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
“You never know who’s going to be governor or chairman of the Federal Reserve,” Rubenstein quipped, speaking of colleagues he’s worked with through the years.
More recently, though, Rubenstein has garnered a reputation as a philanthropist, focusing his time and resources on a uniquely patriotic niche.
He bought a circa-1297 copy of the Magna Carta, now on permanent loan at the National Archives and housed in a visitor’s center bearing Rubenstein’s name.
He purchased rare copies of the Declaration of Independence and Emancipation Proclamation —the latter of which President Barack Obama displayed in the Oval Office.
Rubenstein has put up millions to repair well-known national landmarks: $5 million for badly-needed repairs to the Iwo Jima Memorial; $7.5 million for the Washington Monument following 2011 earthquake damage; and funding for improvements at the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.
60 Minutes highlighted Rubenstein’s additional work to educate the public and Congress members about US history amid his dismay over Americans’ historical literacy.
I want people to know more about our history and heritage because if you don’t know about the history and heritage of the country, I think we’re going to have a less attractive democracy."
David Rubenstein
Cofounder and Cochairman, Carlyle Group
That philosophy was evident at Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia estate, Monticello, outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Rubenstein’s $10 million donation helped fund improvements to make the grounds appear more like they did during Jefferson’s life…including telling the story not just of the third US president but of the enslaved people who worked for him, too.
“If we don’t learn more about our history, we’re probably going to make the same mistakes our predecessors made,” Rubenstein told the AU audience.
During the hour-long conversation, Rubenstein also shared advice geared equally to those preparing for a career and those of any other age. Check out the video below to listen to the entire conversation!
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