John Rogers
The Steward
Legacy, values and the long now, leadership as care and continuity.
John Rogers reads as The Steward, a designation the OTA Leadership Index grounds in his own account on The David Rubenstein Show. As founder of Ariel Investments, his leadership carries the steward's defining marks: patience over spectacle, custodianship over conquest, and a conviction that capital exists to be protected and compounded on behalf of others.
“That was where you adopt a sixth grade class from an inner city urban school and promise to help those young people get to college, basically, and make sure the college is affordable for them. And so it's a very enhanced nurturing program for one specific group of students. Eugene Lang made this famous in New York City.”
“You know, I think that those early days, there was people who really looked out for us. And so Cecil Partee was a city treasurer at the time, and he gave us our first million dollar account. And here I was 25 years old, and he didn't have to do it, but he had influence over the city of Chicago pension plan.”
“Yeah, it gets easier, but it's still a challenge. But that's how we've been doing. And finally, we use Princeton as another institution that I'm close to, and we find talented interns through that.”
“Would wish and hope that you could teach and train But I do think my coach was right, the hard stuff is really, really hard to teach and to change people's DNA because whether it's selfishness, people are going to, during tough times, going to show up, or this idea of being contrarian.”
The David Rubenstein Show: “John Rogers”
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