Co-founder and Co-CEO of the global equity firm, The Carlyle Group, David Rubenstein has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion as of April 2016, according to Forbes. He is #458 in Forbes Billionaires List, #150 in the United States, and # 250 in Forbes 400 List as of 2012. He is one of the richest people in Maryland. Born David M. Rubenstein in Baltimore, Maryland in 1949, he grew up as an only child in a Jewish family. He graduated from the college preparatory high school Baltimore City College and from Duke University in 1970 as magna cum laude. In 1973, he earned his law degree from the University of Chicago Law School where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.

Rubenstein practiced law from 1973 to 1975 in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Before he started Carlyle in 1987 with William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel A. D’Aniello, he was a domestic policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter and has worked in private practice in Washington, D.C. Carlyle Group leveraged ties to politically connected advisers such as former President George H.W. Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major to buy defense businesses, fix them up and sell at a profit. In the third quarter of 2012 alone, the firm reaped proceeds of $5.1 billion from 117 deals executed.

In 2011, Mr. Rubenstein donated $13.5 million to the Foundation for the National Archives. In January 2012, he said he would give $7.5 million to help fix the earthquake-damaged Washington monument. He also gave $15 million to Duke to fund the university’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. Along with Bloomberg CEO Dan Doctoroff and Bloomberg Philanthropies, he pledged in February 2013 a combined $25 million towards finding a cure for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).