David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful investment firms. Mr. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Rubenstein is an original signer of The Giving Pledge, and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award, among other philanthropic awards. Mr. Rubenstein is the host of The David Rubenstein Show on Bloomberg TV and PBS. He lives in Maryland.

David Rubenstein grew up an only child in a Jewish family in Baltimore. His beginnings were modest. His father was employed by the United States Postal Service and his mother was a homemaker. He graduated from the college preparatory high school Baltimore City College, at the time an all-male school, and then from Duke University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude in 1970. He earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1973, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.

In 1987, Rubenstein founded The Carlyle Group with William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel A. D’Aniello. The firm has grown into a global investment firm with $293 billion of assets under management, with more than 1,800 employees in 31 offices on six continents.