Born in Texas to educators Reuben Leon and Fairess in 1931, Harold Clark Simmons was the middle child in an all boys brood of three. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in economics (1951), he attended the same university for his MS Economics degree (1952). His...

On August 12, 1930, a man who would actively redefine society’s and culture’s borders was born in Budapest, Hungary by the name of George Soros. He and his family migrated in England in 1947. He had to survive by manually working as a restaurant waiter as well as a railroad porter in England. In the...

George B. Kaiser cemented his reputation as a devout philanthropist the same way he built the Bank of Oklahoma Financial Corporation; with a burning dedication. With a current net worth of $11 billion, he is ranked 43rd on Forbes World’s Richest People in 2009. Fleeing from Nazi Germany in 1938, his family...

A financier and billionaire philanthropist, Sanford I. Weill was born on March 16, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1955. In 1998, he created Citigroup, Inc., the world’s largest financial services corporation, where he became the CEO until 2003 and remained as its...

James E. Stowers founded the premier investment management firm American Century Companies. The company, formerly known as Twentieth Century Investors, boasts of assets close to $85 billion. American Century Companies initially managed mutual funds. It has since metamorphosed into a globally-esteemed...

Catherine Reynolds sits at the helm of EduCap, Inc., the revolutionary student lending company. Catherine Reynolds helped develop the private education loans market and has been indirectly responsible for sending more Americans to college. Catherine Reynolds is the first person to develop supplementary...

Bernard Osher is the co-Founder of World Savings. He started his career in business in the management of his family’s hardware and plumbing supplies store. From there, he joined Oppenheimer & Company and moved to New York. Later, he took his business sense westward to California and co-founded...

Peter Lynch is known for his highly successful stock picks at Fidelity Investments. He got his start at Fidelity after caddying for Fidelity’s president and other notables and went on to manage a fund which averaged a 29.2% annualized return since its inception. Peter Lynch gives money in several ways. He...

Kenneth Langone is best known as the co-founder of Home Depot. Born to working class parents in Roslyn Heights, New York, Ken Langone achieved his BA from Bucknell University and his MBA from NYU. As an investment banker, Ken Langone achieved notoriety when he took Electronic Data Systems, INC. public in...

Kirk Kerkorian is a rags-to-riches American success story. The son of two Armenian immigrants, Kirk Kerkorian is a testament that the driven can succeed on vision, persistence, hard work, and calculated risk. Kirk Kerkorian was born in California in 1917. After dropping out of school during 8th grade, he...