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00:00This is my kitchen table and also my filing system over much of the past three decades. I've been an investor the highest quality of mankind. I've often thought as private equity. And then I started interviewing on my watch here interviews those I know how to do. I've learned in doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. I asked him how much he wanted. He said to 250. I said fine I didn't negotiate with him. I did no due diligence. I have something I'd like to sell and how they stay there. You don't feel inadequate now because the only the second wealthiest man to rise out right. One of the most impressive young men I've ever met is Westmore. He grew up in my hometown of Baltimore became a Rhodes Scholar White House fellow Afghanistan war veteran and for the last four years he's been running Robin Hood Foundation. He's stepping down soon and likely to run for governor of Maryland. He is somebody who's clearly going to make a mark in this world. In fact has already done so. Welcome to our show. It is so good to be with you as always David. Thank you. Tell people what the Robin Hood Foundation is because recently some people think Robin Hood they think it's stock trading but that's not what you do right. You're not in that Robin Hood right. That that is not what we do. It was amazing. During the whole GameStop episode I. People were blowing up my inbox and saying you know unblock my trades. And I'm like I have no idea how to unblock black fix. I wish you luck with that. But the Robin Hood Foundation is a is a 32 year old organization with an exclusive goal of ending poverty. And and it was started by Paul Tudor Jones and Peter Borsch and a collection of other people who were actually in the investment business. And they started this foundation where they say we want to be able to take take metrics and best practices and invest in the organizations that we think have the highest probability of being able to end this scorch of poverty. And they start off making about forty thousand dollars worth of investments. Now 32 years later we have allocated just shy of four billion dollars into this work in into this fight. And we fund everything from education to housing transportation mental health and physical health. Criminal justice reform anywhere where poverty is either the cause or the consequence. We will find fund build if necessary. All these mechanisms that we think put us on our better pathway of creating a more equitable society. So how much money does Robin Hood give away annually. I'd say yes. So so over the you know when we think about the process over the last year you know we ended up raising around two hundred and forty million dollars. You know just in the past four years that I've been in the CEO we've raised over to over six hundred seventy five million dollars. But the unique thing about our model is actually this is that you know there are certain foundations that will say OK we'll take a portion of our endowment and allocate the portion of our endowment into our grant making. Robin Hoods endowment is essentially zero right. There's there's a uniqueness of our model is that every dollar we get in it will go out within that net within you know within the time period that next calendar year. And so every year on January 1 it's like you know it's like press go again. We raise. And then we get the money out in the capital as quickly as possible. You have staff who pays for the staff all the administrative costs that usually add some foundations. That could be a you know five or 10 percent. Absolutely. If not if not more. And but you know the other unique model the any mechanism of Robinson's model is actually the fact that our board actually covers all operational expenses. What cove. It must've made it more difficult to raise money or to figure out how to give it away and to run the foundation remotely. So how did you do that. Yeah I mean Code Cove it was Cove in this past year was a remarkable year did and there was a lot of uncertainty uncertainty about how does what does that mean in terms of how we continue to move at a quick enough fast pace despite the fact we weren't gonna be together. How do we consider the fact that we knew how damaging this was going to be on our communities and our community partners. As you know we saw eleven years of job growth go away in 11 weeks and we knew which communities would be hit hardest by that. It was our communities. And so. So but I I'm so proud of the way that we responded and rebounded. You know we activated something called the relief fund which was the you know only the third time and the organize it in the histories organization that we've activated. The relief fund once was after 9/11. The other was after Hurricane Sandy. And now the third was Kobe 19 where we had a specific few specific focuses. One was supporting the nonprofit sector which we knew was going to take an extraordinary hit. And these were all the organizations that were doing the social service work in the city and beyond that needed it. And the second piece was emergency cash assistance just getting cash into people's hands. We knew that from data that we that we supported and funded and helped build that that that over 40 percent around 43 percent of people could not afford a four hundred dollar shock with cash. Well that shock that shock was here and it was a lot more than 400 dollars. So we knew immediately what you had to do was get cash supports into people that needed it most. And specifically people who we saw government intervention was not touching. And let me ask you during covered many nonprofit organizations have suffered because they would say their donors don't feel as wealthy as they did before. Did your donors say you know not right now. I know it's a problem but I don't make as much money as I used to. Or did you get more money from your donors. Yeah. But we actually saw people who who who stepped up significantly. And and I think there's a couple things you know that we learned and really helped to package with all that. You know one was that one was that you know the reality was is that not everyone was getting financially hurt. During this time that while you did have certain people who did see their incomes their incomes decrease or are in many cases their incomes go away. You saw some that actually saw their businesses increase and their businesses jump. And part of the challenge that we also continue to see was how this separation and this divide and the wealth divide how it shows itself. And so you had people who that dynamic in that reality showed itself also in philanthropic giving. The second piece was I think we saw a measure of human pain and a universe charity of the human pain that was impossible for people not to respond to. Let's talk about how you became the head of the Robin Hood Foundation because you're not. You've worked in New York but you're from Baltimore as you mentioned earlier. And you're Minding Your Own Business. You're in Baltimore. You're living in Baltimore. How did they come to your view. And had you been doing anything like this that would have given you the qualification that for them to think that you'd be the right person. I call myself the most accidental foundation head that you could ever possibly imagine because I had no background. And in philanthropy you know they were like you know we'd like for you to consider being the CEO of Robin Hood. And I said I don't know if that makes sense. And I said I'm thinking of a bunch of reasons why. But let me give you three. And I said the first reason is you know I live in Baltimore. You know I'm a Marylander and I don't plan on moving in. So I don't know how I would run a New York based organization when I'm here living in Baltimore. The second piece that I said to them was you know what I'm enjoying the work that I'm doing here in Maryland. And then the third piece was I said you know I've been I've been critical of philanthropy historically. And in fact the head of the search committee was became the chair of the board. And a good friend said you know we've it's all over the Internet. We've seen it until mentions. Have you realize you're not that persuasive then you couldn't persuade them. Not. But let's talk about incredible life story which most people when they hear about it they say how can anybody do all that. So let's talk about this. You're born in Baltimore and then your father died when he was when you were young. Is that right. He died when I was when I was about four years old. He died in front of me. For me for a a rare but a treatable virus your mother said OK we're going to move you to New York or she wanted to move New York. And you moved to the Bronx then. Yeah. So so she was having a really difficult time with the transition. You know she became a widow in her 20s with three children that she was going to raise our own and had a really difficult time with it. And eventually she called up her parents my grandparents who lived up in the Bronx. My you're right. My grandfather was a minister in the South Bronx. My grandmother was a schoolteacher for 25 years in South Bronx. Both emigrated to to this country. Right. And and but now they're at their house is barely big enough for them. They figured out a way to make it big enough for all of us. Sorry. She moved up there and you were the perfect child. You never got in trouble. Everything worked out well. Is that right. My in my own mind yes. No I mean I had a.. That was a really hard transition for me. You know I found myself hurting people that actually did love me so I could impress people with I could care less about me. I mean I felt I first time that I was handcuffed it was when I was 11 years old. And and so by the time I was 13 after years of threats of sending me away to this school or semi way to that school or whatever it was when I was 13 my mom made good on her threats and she sent me to military school. Right. You went to a military school and I assume you weren't dying to go to a military school and wasn't. Life was my first choice. I straighten you out a little bit or something like that. They did. Well you know it took a little while. David you know I read away. I think I ran away five times in the first four days. All right. So eventually you go to a military college. Is that right. That's correct. In your college. I did. I graduated from high school. And then I. And I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And honestly for many people in my life particularly a lot of the men in my life who were my mentors at that point in my. And the people I admired they all had one thing in common. And that's they all wore the uniform of this country. And so I went to I joined the army and then I went to a military college. All right. But then you eventually went to Johns Hopkins did that right. That's right. At Johns Hopkins you must've done reasonably well because you were elected as a Rhodes Scholar. Yeah. Now sometimes people that win Rhodes scholarships they go to Oxford they get a degree or they don't get the grade. Then they come back and say OK I'm going to go to Harvard Law School Yale Law School. I'm going to go into something important like private equity whatever it might be. Right. What did you decide to do. How come you didn't go to Harvard or Yale Law School or some other great law school. How come you decided to do something that probably not that many Rhodes scholars were doing. Well you know at first I actually went to you know I went to the world of finance and I was there for a little while. We're going to Deutsche Bank in London. And it was great and it was nice. And then I tell you David I was. I remember getting a phone call and I was I was brand new a brand new analyst working on deals. And it was from my good buddy. At that time Major Mike Frenzel who was with the eighty second Airborne Division and he said silly me that he said so when are you going to get into the fight. And now isn't dying for me as you know because I trained I am a paratrooper. I'd gone through gone through all my training with my soldiers and as I as my soldiers are now deploying to Afghanistan and deploying to Iraq I was. Working in in high finance and I literally went back and thought about it and prayed on it and I went back and and called him back up. I think a couple days later and said Mike I'm a man. And so I ended up doing a. They end up doing a by name request for me. And I left finance and I went and I joined up with the eighty second Airborne Division. I went actually down to Fort Benning to go to go do my training and moved up. And then literally probably around nine months after that conversation that I had in the stairwell of Deutsche Bank with Mike Frenzel. I was getting ready to deploy with the eighty second airborne to Afghanistan. All right. So you go to Afghanistan but did you ask for an office job there something that could be kind of not be shot at or something like that. No not at all. We are. I was very clear. You know I went over and I led a group of paratroopers as a special operations officer over there working you know information operations psycho psyops which is you know psychological operations. And we were very much in the field. And you know what was interesting is that so much of the conversation at that time 2005 was was Iraq. You know we had about 150000 troops in Iraq at the time. In Afghanistan we only had about 17000 troops. And so I remember actually when I got deployment orders for Afghanistan there were a lot of people like who you know listen I'm going to Iraq not knowing the kind of fighting that was going on in Afghanistan at that time. And literally within the first days of Afghanistan I started seeing firsthand you know little when you see first firefight you start seeing just what kind of fighting was going on in Afghanistan. So how long were you over there. I was there for a little a little shy of a year but to NASDAQ. Then you came back to the United States. I did. And what did you do that then. Actually started working back in now. So I did first did a White House fellowship. Mike Fencing gentlemen was a former White House fellow. And actually I came back from a mission one night and he said I want you to apply for this thing called the White House Fellowship. And he said you know this is it's important for people back in Washington to get a firsthand understanding of of the year that you're having right now so they can actually see what's going on on the ground. So I apply for White House fellowship. I was blessed to receive it. And I had the honor of working under under then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her team which was just an unbelievable and a life shifting experience for me to be able to go through that. OK so you were after the White House Fellowship. You worked for Condoleezza Rice. Did your mother say now can you get a serious job. That's a full time thing. Make some money. Does that what you finally decided to do. What did you do. I did. At that time my mother was like I slow down. It's hard actually for burying a family. And also I was newly married now at that point too. So so now you really are starting to think about. All right. What are the things that you want to be able to do. And I started thinking about the things I was interested in missing the skill sets that I had. And so I decided that. So maybe I should try to give the gift an answer shot. And then I had to had the pleasure then of working at city and working for for a few years at city as a first as an analyst associate then a vice president you know just working on collections of deals. So you moved to New York. I then moved to New York. Yes. Yes. So we were living in Maryland. I got back for Afghanistan and moved to New York for a few years. And then when did you move back to Baltimore. I remember having a conversation with with another mentor of mine a person who was running investment banking now is running for Mayor Ray Maguire. And and I went to him and I said you know I think I'm I think it's time for me to do something different. I just finished actually writing a book called The Other Westmore which was an important process. And time for me just to also be reflective about my own life. And and that's when I said I made the decision that I really wanted to leave finance and to go focus on on these issues that are really my life's burning issues. So now you are leaving shortly Robinhood. Are you going to pursue what I call the higher calling of private equity or doing something else. I know the issues I want to get done. I know the work I want to try to do. I'm thinking about what's the right platform. Being a Rhodes scholar and a White House fellow isn't enough. You have to write a book as well to make everybody else look bad because you're doing too many things. So tell people now who are watching who the other West War was. It was right after I got the Rhodes Scholarship The Baltimore Sun which is our hometown paper. You wrote this article about this local kid who just got an award and was now getting ready to help to England on this scholarship. And at the same time they're writing a whole series of articles about four guys who walked into a jewelry store and and attempted to rob the jewelry store in this botched jewelry store robbery ended up murdering an off duty police officer. And there was a twelve day national manhunt for these four guys. And finally after twelve days all four guys were caught. One of the people that was eventually caught was a guy whose we were living in the same area around the same age. We both grew up in single parent households. And his name was also Westmore. And I reached out to him and I wrote him this note. He wrote me a note back. And eventually those that singular note turned to dozens of notes. Those dozens of notes turned to dozens of visits. I have now known Wes for for for almost two decades. But. But at the same time I was getting ready to England. He was getting ready to start his life sentence in prison. And so the other Wes Moore was a book that really evolved from our years of friendship and about these two kids and what ends up happening that causes this split amongst these two kids with similar backgrounds to include names. So you've now written five books. One of them is about Freddie Gray. And this was a person who was taken into a police paddy wagon and en route to the police station I guess died and caused riots in Baltimore and so forth. What is your own view now on whether the racial situation in the United States because of examples like Freddie Gray or R or George Floyd have gotten worse than when you were growing up. Or do you see any progress being made. Yeah I mean I see I see the potential for progress being made and the potential for progress being made is the fact that that we're now understanding and talking about this is not just isolated incidences but we're understanding the the the longevity and the lineage of this that that the damage of of George Floyd wasn't just the fact that we watched a homicide on camera but it was the fact that his name gets added to a much longer lineage of names that there's just been no accountability for. Right. But it also comes down to the fact that we watch how these acts and we watch how these issues of systemic racism do show themselves in not just policing whether you're talking about educational attainment where they talk about wealth whether you're talking about from maternal mortality whether you're talking about whether you're talking about you know basic asset allocation. It's race and it's impossible to understand this without disaggregated the importance of it. And so I think that the the platform for progress is the fact that we are now having a much shore and an honest conversation about what is it going to take for us to move into a better space and a place where we're watching. We're watching. It's not just oppressed populations who are demanding justice. And that's the power of this moment. Many African-American men of your age or older have told me of their own life experiences where they were stopped by police for things that didn't seem appropriate at the time to them certainly. Have you had those run ins with the police since you've been an adult. Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah and you know and but it's both the fact that we've had these interactions and the fact that the the sound of a police siren. It just has a different pitch depending on what neighborhood you're in and your heart rate speeds up in a different way when you're already anticipating the fact that this this encounter could go wrong. And and how it could be interpreted by other people. But it's also the fact that you know that I as a as a as a father now that I know that I'm gonna be forced to have conversations that other people not can be forced to have with our children. So now you are going to be leaving shortly Robinhood. You're gonna go study in Baltimore. Are you going to pursue what I've called the higher calling of private equity or doing something else. I've read in the newspapers that you're thinking of running for governor of Maryland. Is there any truth to that. I am exploring running for running for governor Maryland. And and you know. And I'm thinking about it just in terms of I know I want to focus on untrue systems change. I think we're just at a very crucial point where on issues that I have spent my entire adult life on whether they be ending child poverty whether it be eliminating the racial wealth gap about how do we think about education in a fair way that we're actually providing real pathways for our students. These are all issues that are right in front of us right now and we're making generational decisions right now. And so I know the work. I know the issues I want to get done. I know the work I want to try to do. I'm thinking about what's the right platform. And I think that there is not just a unique potential you know a lane but there's a unique way to be able to you know finally put an ending on issues I care about. I suppose the president the United States is watching this and he says we're stuck running for office. That's tough. Why don't you come in. I'll give you our senior job in the administration and become a cabin officer or something. Would you go in there by the administration or you really want to run for office and the governorship in Maryland. Yeah I mean I have I have a deep admiration for all folks who choose to serve in administrations. I also know that I'm at the stage of my career as well where I know my skill sets and I know what I'm good at. And I'm a pretty good executive. I know how to run things and and run large organizations. And I work within. I've worked within and with government my entire career. And I know that that for me this is not about I want to go into politics. For me as this is about the fact that the executive role who actually controls a budget who is has a chance to actually change a destiny for a generation of children and families that that something makes my heart beat faster. And that's what makes me excited. So people who are watching they would say OK. After he got his life together he won a Rhodes Scholarship White House fellowship written five books heads Robinhood happily married to kids. That's a perfect picture. Make us feel that we're not so inadequate ourselves. Tell us something you're doing that doesn't work out where you've failed. Something so we can feel that we're just not watching a superhuman. We want somebody who has mistakes or fail. There's something you can say you're not good at. They're there. Let me tell you something. There is a there is there is plenty that I am not good at and plenty that I've failed that. But I'll tell you one thing about me David is I'm not afraid to fail.

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The David Rubenstein Show: Robin Hood Foundation CEO Wes Moore

Robin Hood Foundation Chief Executive Officer Wes Moore says the country needs to have honest conversations about racism. Moore discusses the struggle for racial equality in America, his organization's Covid relief work, and why he may run for governor in Maryland in 2022. He appears on the latest episode of "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations." The interview was recorded on March 31. (Source: Bloomberg)

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