
His family built a business around Mississippi hardwood. Jonathan Jones has widened the portfolio - and is putting money into the classrooms and workplaces that give the next generation a reason to stay.
Fintech paid the bills. Scott Riley saw what the bills could tell him - and found students who could help. His next investment was in the people coming after him.
Netflix taught Reed Hastings how success can harden into habit. His next chapter runs through classrooms, artificial intelligence and a Utah mountain, with the same awkward question: when should the rules change?

He finished Michigan in two and a quarter years. Decades later, the New Mountain Capital founder began asking why everyone else should have to pay for four.
He arrived in Washington with $3 and a cardboard suitcase. Stewart W. Bainum Sr. helped build the business that became Choice Hotels, then spent decades helping students cross the financial barrier he remembered from his own classroom.

He left Taiwan for Illinois, built a career in the parts that connect electronics, and returned to help rebuild the place that taught him. Sidney Lu’s story runs through factories, classrooms and a debt to his mother.

From elevator maintenance to aerospace components, Rajeev Amara has built Arcline around businesses with a practical job to do. His support for educators reveals another interest in institutions whose usefulness grows through other people.

A crêpe dispute in Los Angeles offers a glimpse of the Telesystem chief’s appetite for a challenge. From Montreal’s music business to a gaming venture run from Madrid, François-Charles Sirois keeps putting his ideas about risk to work.

He built Madison by buying businesses, then changed course when selling them began to feel like a loss. From a borrowed $50,000 to a business school bearing his name, Larry Gies keeps returning to one question: what will last?
Before he founded Leon Capital Group, Fernando De Leon crossed the border for school and traded translation fees for a stake in the future. His career keeps returning to the same question: who gets to own what comes next?

After a career spanning New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, Blair Richardson built Bow River Capital in Denver. His story connects a regional investment thesis with a long-running interest in what people can do when they get a start.
After the family hog business was sold, Dell Murphy built a management company for what came next. In Wallace, North Carolina, that work now connects farms, boats, hospitality and another generation of Murphys.