Robert Frederick Smith

From Wikipedia

Robert Frederick Smith was born December 1, 1962, he is an American investor. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm with over $26 billion in assets as of September 2016. Smith was ranked by Forbes in 2016 as the 274th richest person in America, the second wealthiest African American on the list after Oprah Winfrey.  He was #688 on Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of US$2.5 billion.

Robert F. Smith was born to two parents with PhDs, who were school teachers. He grew up in a mostly African American, middle class neighborhood in Denver, and attended a newly-integrated school.

When he was an infant, his mother carried him at the March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In high school, he applied for an internship at Bell Labs but was told the program was intended for college students. Smith persisted, calling every day. When a student from M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a reliability test for semiconductors.

Smith trained as a chemical engineer at Cornell University, earning his B.S. in Chemical Engineering.  At Cornell he was a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha.

After working at Kraft General Foods, where he earned two United States and two European patents, he attended Columbia Business School. Smith graduated with honors. From 1994–2000, he joined Goldman Sachs in tech investment banking, first in New York and then in Silicon Valley. As Co-Head of Enterprise Systems and Storage, he executed and advised on over $50B in merger and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. He was the first person at Goldman Sachs to focus solely on Tech M&A and foreign countries .

In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, of which he is the Founder, Chairman and CEO. Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology enabled solutions sectors. Among Vista’s portfolio companies are Misys, TIBCO, Solera, Active Network, Bullhorn, Omnitracs, and Newscyle.

Robert F. Smith is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners.   As Vista’s Chairman and CEO, Mr. Smith directs Vista’s investment strategy and decisions, firm governance and investor relations.

Vista currently manages cumulative capital commitments of over $26 billion and oversees a portfolio of over 35 software companies that employ approximately 42,000 employees worldwide. Since Vista’s founding in 2000, Mr. Smith has overseen over 240 completed transactions by the firm.  During that time, Vista has managed capital for hundreds of limited partners, including many prominent public, private and corporate pension plans, endowments, family offices, and high net worth individuals.

Under Robert Smith’s leadership, Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology enabled solutions sectors. Mr. Smith is a member of the investment committees of the Firm's funds and currently serves on, or participates on, the boards of many of the Vista Flagship and Foundation Funds' portfolio companies.

In January 2015, based on its performance over the last 10 years, Vista Equity Partners was named the world’s #1 performing private equity firm, according to the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg. Preqin, a consulting firm that tracks the industry, reports that Vista’s third fund returned $2.46 for every dollar invested, better than every other big fund raised between 2006 and 2010, the boom years for private equity.

Mr. Smith’s business achievements and global philanthropic works have received recognition from numerous entities - including the Reginald F. Lewis Achievement Award, the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Robert Toigo Foundation, the Ripple of Hope Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Award of Excellence from the National Association of Investment Companies, and the Columbia University BBSA Distinguished Alumni Award.

Mr. Smith is the Chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Member of the Cornell Engineering College Council, and a Trustee of the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Mr. Smith is a Board Member of Carnegie Hall. He is also an avid fly fisherman.

In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion, its largest fund to date.

In July 2015, Smith married Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy Playmate, model, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor.  He has five children, three from a previous marriage and two with Dworaczyk.  Their first child, Hendrix Robert Smith, was born in December 2014. Smith resides in Austin, Texas.

      Robert F Smith at Youth Symposium 2016 HD


      Robert Smith, Vista Equity Partners, at 2015 Color of Wealth Summit

Ophelia Devore

By Maureen McGavin,Bob Hufford,others:

In 1946 model and entrepreneur Ophelia Devore started Grace Del Marco, the first model agency in America to focus on ethnic talent. Devore identified and nurtured the careers of several household names, including Diahann Carroll, Richard Roundtree (Shaft), and Cicely Tyson.

Ophelia DeVore Mitchell, a model, businesswoman and pioneer in the "black is beautiful" movement, DeVore exemplified power, pride, presence and beauty in African American women. A former model and longtime business executive, she started one of the first modeling agencies for black models, which helped launch the early careers of actresses Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, among other celebrities.

DeVore also opened a charm school for young black women to learn etiquette, self-presentation and confidence; launched a cosmetics company catering to African American women, and took over the Columbus Times, a daily newspaper for the African American community in Columbus, Ga..She was appointed by President Reagan to the John F. Kennedy Center Committee on the Arts in 1985 and has been involved in many community programs throughout her career.

One of the first mixed-race models in the United States, Emma Ophelia DeVore was born in Edgefield, S.C., in 1922, to parents of German, French, Native American and African American heritage. She was raised in coastal South Carolina and received training in dance, art, and music in addition to her basic education. In 1933, DeVore was sent to New York City to live with her aunt and complete her education. she graduated from Hunter College High School and earned a degree in mathematics and languages from New York University. She enrolled in the Vogue School of Modeling, and not until another black girl was rejected did she realize that the school management thought her a dark-skinned white.

Finding her opportunities limited in America, at least until "Ebony" magazine was founded in 1945, she journeyed to Europe where she received numerous assignments, especially in France, though again she sometimes 'passed' as Norwegian. Realizing that there were few avenues for her, and none at all for dark-skinned blacks

In 1946, she and four friends co-founded Grace del Marco Models; in addition to Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, the agency represented such notable figures as Richard Roundtree ("Shaft"), Gail Fisher ("Mannix"); Trudy Haynes, one of the first African American female TV reporters; and Helen Williams, one of the first successful African American models. The agency sought to encourage the media to portray African Americans in non-stereotypical ways.

DeVore took on mainstream publications, advertisers and other agencies who avoided hiring African American models, and she was a tough businesswoman proud of her accomplishments. She once sued Life Magazine after it published a story in 1969 on black models for which she was interviewed; the resulting article cited white-owned agencies instead.

Over the years she hosted ABC's "Spotlight on Harlem", sponsored the first black beauty pageants, wrote columns for "The Pittsburgh Courrier" and for the National Newspaper Publisher's Association, and had her own "Ophelia DeVore Show" on cable television.

The Ophelia DeVore School of Charm, which opened in 1948, offered social training for African American young women. It provided lessons in etiquette, poise and posture, ballet, speech, and self-presentation (including grooming lessons in hair styling, applying makeup, and dressing in flattering clothes). Hip-hop artist Faith Evans, widow of the Notorious B.I.G., is one of many notable graduates.

The school, which closed in 2006, reached its peak between the 1960s and the 1990s, and at times graduated about 100 students in a class, says James D. Carter, DeVore's son, who took over the charm school for a number of years and ran other aspects of various DeVore businesses.

DeVore had five children with her first husband, Harold Carter, whom she married in 1941. She married her second husband, Columbus Times publisher Vernon Mitchell, in 1968. When he passed away in 1972, she took the newspaper's helm as its owner, with her daughter, Carol Gertjegerdes, as co-publisher and executive editor.

       Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell: A Modeling Career


        The Official Tony Brown's Journal -- Ophelia DeVore

The Real Lone Ranger

                  Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves

Over his 32-year career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, Bass Reeves arrested 3,000 felons, killed 14 men, and was never shot himself. His reputation for persistence, his total fearlessness, his skills with a gun, and his ability to outsmart outlaws struck terror into lawbreakers in what we now call Oklahoma. Although other colorful characters made their way into our pop culture, Bass was the real badass of the Old West.

         Legends lies the real west Season 1 Episode 9 the real lone ranger bass reeves1


Bass Reeves was a former slave-turned-lawman who served with the US Marshals Service for 32 years at the turn of the 20th century in part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas known as Indian Territory. Though he was illiterate, Reeves became an expert tracker and detective – a man who, in Burton’s words, “walked in the valley of death every day for 35 years and brought in some of the worst outlaws from that period”.

Bass Reeves was born a slave in Arkansas in 1838. His slavemaster, William S. Reeves, moved the household to Texas in 1846. When the Civil War broke out, William Reeves' son George was made a colonel in the Confederate army and took Bass to war with him. At the most opportune moment, Reeves escaped while George was sleeping and took off out west for Indian Territory. Accounts vary on whether Bass beat up George as he left, and whether his immediate aim was freedom or to escape punishment over a card game dispute. In any case, Reeves went to live among the Creek and Seminole Indians. He learned their customs and languages and became a proficient territorial scout. Reeves eventually procured a homestead in Van Buren, Arkansas, where he was the first black settler. He married Nellie Jennie, built an eight-room house with his bare hands, and raised ten children—five girls and five boys. Life was good, but it was about to change for Bass Reeves.

For ten years, he was just a peaceful farmer with a wife and ten children.  (Five boys and five girls.)  But in 1875, Isaac C. Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory, and he appointed, in turn, James Fagin as head U.S, Marshal.  Fagin knew Reeves by reputation -- knew he was intimate with the Indian Territory and could speak a number of Indian languages -- and Bass Reeves became the first black Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi.

Indian Territory was where the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw tribes who were forcibly removed from their homes were resettled following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. But they weren't the only citizens of Indian Territory. There were also former slaves of the tribes, freed and made tribal members after the Civil War, settlers from the East (both black and white) who sharecropped tribal property, and a good measure of outlaws fleeing from civilization. Indian territory was attractive to lawbreakers because of its peculiar judiciary arrangement: The tribal courts had jurisdiction only over tribal members. Non-Indians were under the jurisdiction of federal courts, but there were few marshals to supervise a very large area.

Reeves was 38 years old at the time, 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighed 180 pounds, and rode a large horse. He cut an imposing figure as he patrolled the 75,000 square miles of Indian Territory. He quickly gained a reputation as a tough and fearless lawman who managed to bring in outlaws thought to be invincible. Reeves traveled the long circuit with a wagon, cook, and often a posse. He carried chains to secure prisoners to the wagon, as he sometimes had a dozen or more by the time he returned to Ft. Smith, where Judge Parker held court.

Reeves was so quick with a pistol he was likened to a “Methodist preacher reaching for a platter of fried chicken during Sunday dinner at the deacon’s house.” Another story had Reeves using “superhuman strength” to free a steer that had become stuck in a bog, despite failed attempts by a group of cowboys to help the animal. One book about Reeves had it that his hat and clothes were riddled with bullets, his horses killed, his gunbelt shot off his body – but “miraculously, he was never wounded”.

Reeves approached the three murderous Brunter brothers and handed them a warrant for their arrest. The three outlaws laughed and read the warrant, and in the split second they all took their eyes off Reeves, he managed to draw his gun and kill two of them, and immediately disarmed and arrested the third.

In 1889, after Reeves was assigned to Paris, Texas, he went after the Tom Story gang for their long-term horse theft operation. He waited along the route Tom Story used, and surprised him with an arrest warrant. Story panicked and drew his gun, but Reeves drew and shot him dead before Story could fire. The rest of the gang disbanded and were never heard from again.

Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and Reeves' commission as marshal ended. He was 68 years old by then, but took on another position with the Muskogee Police Department, which he kept until his health began to fail. Reeves died of Bright's disease in 1910. In his 32 years as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, Reeves had seen bullets fly through his clothing and hat, but was never injured by an outlaw. His record of 3,000 arrests dwarfs the arrest records of better known Old West lawmen such as Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok.

                                The life story of Bass Reeves


        Bass Reeves film - Lawless


       A Deputy US Marshal Must Arrest His Own Son


       Legends and Lies The Real West s01e09 Bass Reeves - TV show


       Marshal Bass Reeves