For David Rubenstein, Success Is Serendipitous

The following is an article that I wrote, which appeared in the April 4, 2025, edition of the Baltimore Jewish Times:

David Rubenstein
(Photo credit: Chris Ullman)

As far as David Rubenstein is concerned, success comes with responsibility, and it is not something to be taken lightly.

A successful businessman who co-founded The Carlyle Group, one of the largest private investment firms in the world, Rubenstein, a resident of Bethesda, Maryland, is also a philanthropist, author, host of a TV show and owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Yet with an exceedingly busy schedule amid a range of projects with which he is involved, Rubenstein has made giving back in a multitude of ways a core element of his identity.

Rubenstein’s life story began with his modest upbringing in Baltimore, first in a home on Beaufort Avenue where his family lived until he was 10 years old, and then in a house on Fallstaff Road after they moved. He recalls the area being very Jewish.

“Baltimore was very segregated by religion, and although the United States Supreme Court outlawed restrictive covenants in 1948, Baltimore never seemed to get the word. So, people who were Jewish or Black tended to live in the same areas. … I lived in a kind of Jewish ghetto. … There were three types of Jewish ghettos. There were blue-collar Jewish ghettos, there were middle-class ones, and then there were the very wealthy Jewish ghettos. My father was working in the post office and was in the blue-collar world. And these were very small homes. I think they’re roughly 800-square-foot homes, and that was where I grew up,” he said.

David Rubenstein’s birth announcement in
Baltimore Jewish Times in August 1949

As a child, Rubenstein, whose birth announcement appeared in Baltimore Jewish Times in August 1949, attended Hebrew school at the Rogers Avenue Synagogue. “That was an Orthodox synagogue,” Rubenstein said. “Orthodox in those days did not mean quite what Orthodox means today. Orthodox today seems to mean what ultra-Orthodox might have meant years ago, but it was a segregated by women and men kind of synagogue. I went to Hebrew school there and High Holy Day observances to the extent that I did. And I went to Hebrew school until I was ready to be bar mitzvahed. The rabbi told my mother that he was going to write it out for me phonetically in English, because he didn’t think my Hebrew was so great. So, he did. I can’t remember if I read it from the phonetic English or if I read the Hebrew, but I got it done, and that was my bar mitzvah.”

A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Rubenstein practiced law in New York in the early 1970s before turning to a career in public service. He began by serving as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments before heading to the White House to serve as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy during the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981.

David Rubenstein, left, with his parents, Robert and Bettie Rubenstein, and President Jimmy Carter
(Photo credit: The White House)

Rubenstein described the path and thought process that led him to ultimately working in the White House.

“In those days, if you were in a blue-collar family, you didn’t generally aspire to go become an extremely wealthy person — the ideas of tech startups, private equity firms, hedge funds, didn’t really exist,” he said. “If you were Jewish and wanted to go into business, you usually went into your family business — the business your father or grandfather had started. In those days, there was a fair amount of, I would say, solid discrimination. So, if you were Jewish, I don’t think you could go work at IBM, Procter & Gamble, and think you were going to rise to the top. And so, people who were Jewish tended, with some exceptions, obviously, to go into more entrepreneurial businesses that were often started by their family members. But if you didn’t want to go into business, you might go into law or medicine or dentistry. And my skill set was probably better in things that led to being a lawyer. I was interested in politics and public service. I did not aspire to make any money, and so I just thought going into public service would be a useful way to spend my life. And so, I ultimately got a law degree, thinking that that would help. And then I did go to work in public service on Capitol Hill briefly, and then in the White House for four years.”

While in the White House, Rubenstein was involved in many different initiatives, but one project stood out and has remained important to him to this day.

“My boss was Stuart Eizenstat,” he said. “He and I — but really, he — sent a memo to the president recommending that we create a memorial for the Holocaust victims in the United States. We didn’t have one. Carter ultimately announced it. Now, as you know, it’s open. It was announced in 1978 and it opened in 1993. … Stuart, my former boss, is now the chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and I have become a good-sized donor to it.”

In 2022, Rubenstein donated $15 million to the museum to support its National Institute for Holocaust Documentation, which was ultimately renamed in his honor.

“The atrocities that have occurred and are still occurring in Ukraine remind the world daily that the lessons of the Holocaust have not been fully learned by those who still have the power to kill others senselessly and those who collaborate with them. So those of us in a position to do more to remind the world of the Holocaust have a moral obligation to do so,” Rubenstein said at the time. “I am pleased to help toward that mission and encourage others to reflect on what more they might be able to do to help remind the world that the Holocaust might be not just a historic tragedy but also a precursor to what could happen again.”

David Rubenstein at the Library of Congress
(Photo credit: Robert Severi)

According to Rubenstein, going from a career in public service to co-founding an incredibly successful investment firm involved a fair amount of luck.

“Like most things in life that tend to be good, they often are by serendipity,” he said. “I worked in the White House for four years. I thought Carter would be reelected. I couldn’t imagine he would lose, but we did have hostages in Iran, we had gas lines, we had high inflation. And despite my telling Carter, ‘Look, you can’t lose to somebody so old — he’s 69 years old,’ when 69 seemed like an ancient age to me … we lost.”

After Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, Rubenstein found himself looking for work.

“The only skill set that I had was practicing law, which I’d done in New York,” he said. “So, I went back and practiced law in Washington for a few years, but I realized I really didn’t enjoy it and I probably wasn’t really good at it. I read about something called a ‘leveraged buyout’ and I decided I would start a leveraged buyout firm in Washington where none had existed and I recruited some people to do it with me who raised a little money.”

As to his decision to walk away from the legal field, Rubenstein said it wasn’t a difficult choice.

“It was mostly because I didn’t think I was very good at practicing law, and I didn’t really want to do this the rest of my life as a lawyer,” he said. “And what lawyers in Washington often did is they would practice law then go back into government and then practice law, then go back into government, back and forth. And I didn’t really think that was something I wanted to do that much. Also, if you did that, if you were a lawyer and you were kind of connected to government, you often had to go raise money for politicians. And I just didn’t want to be in the business of raising money for politicians — it just wasn’t something I was interested in. So, I decided to try to start this firm, and it took off, and obviously became one of the larger ones in the world. But it was by serendipity, and we got lucky.”

David Rubenstein at the top of the Washington Monument
(Photo credit: Tami Heilemann)

As he achieved great financial success, Rubenstein became very involved in various philanthropic efforts. He’s supported institutions such as the Jewish Museum of Maryland and Jewish Life at Duke (Rubenstein graduated magna cum laude from Duke in 1970). In addition, he’s been a major contributor in the area of patriotic philanthropy and made significant gifts to help restore and repair the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, Library of Congress, and many others.

“When you get lucky and you make a fair amount of money, you can be buried with it … but I just thought that it was better to do things while you’re alive and help other people,” he said. “What is the most important part of life? I think it’s the pursuit of happiness. And how do you get happiness? No one can really completely define it, but I think it’s probably helping other people.

“I decided when I got financially lucky that I would start giving away the bulk of my money, which I’ve been doing, and I’ve got various causes that I’ve been involved with,” Rubenstein said. “A lot of them relate to history or heritage of the country. A lot relate to education; a lot to medicine. And very often, when I give money to somebody, they will probably put my name on something. And I haven’t been upset with that, because my theory has been that if you come from very modest circumstances, and you get lucky financially, and you’re Jewish, putting your name on something that, let’s say, relates to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, it shows that people who are Jewish are not only giving money to Jewish causes, which is what some people think, and that you can be Jewish and contribute to non-Jewish causes and be actively involved in and supporting the history and heritage of the country, even though a lot of this history and heritage occurred well before people who were Jewish really became prominent in this country.”

In addition, Rubenstein has been supportive of the arts, and specifically the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. However, his lengthy tenure as chair of the Kennedy Center recently came to an end when President Donald Trump removed the Kennedy Center board members and replaced them with his allies. The board then voted to remove Rubenstein as chair and appointed the president as chair.

“I’d been the chair for 14 years and been on the board for 20, and at the end of this past December, I had planned to retire,” Rubenstein said. “And the person who was going to succeed me ultimately decided not to do it. And so, the board asked me to stay another two years, and I was prepared to do that, but President Trump decided that he wasn’t happy with the Kennedy Center for some reason, and so he decided he would make himself the chair. And while no president of the United States has ever been the chair before, I guess he could do that. So, I’m out now. I did give the Kennedy Center about $120 million over the years, and I enjoyed it. But things move on.”

Rubenstein has also been financially supportive of efforts to combat the rising antisemitism that is being seen on a global scale. Noting that antisemitism in Europe “is very, very virulent” and that “antisemitism in the United States is also on the rise,” Rubenstein discussed why he believes it’s become so pervasive.

“The human brain has some flaws, and one of the flaws it has is it says, if you look different than me, you think differently than me, you pray differently than me, then I might not like you as much. … I don’t know that we’re going to correct that flaw in the human brain, and as long as it’s there, if Jews worship differently or think differently than other people, or look differently or dress differently, there’s going to be antisemitism,” he said.

In 2024, Rubenstein became the principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles when he led a group of investors who purchased the team for $1.725 billion. The Baltimore native and longtime Orioles fan saw an opportunity and chose to pursue it as a means of giving back to the community.

David Rubenstein, bottom row center, with his Little League team
(Courtesy of the Rubenstein family)

“I played baseball when I was a boy at Little League. I wasn’t a particularly great athlete — I probably peaked at seven or eight, maybe nine years old. I thought maybe I would be the next Sandy Koufax or something, but when I got to be about nine or 10, I realized I wasn’t going to be Sandy Koufax. … But I, like many people who grew up in Baltimore, worshiped some of the Oriole players and went to as many games as I could afford to go to,” he said, fondly recalling his baseball experiences as a child.

“I recognized that the Orioles ownership was maybe going to get ready to sell at some point,” Rubenstein said. “I had resisted buying sports franchises because I generally didn’t want to take my focus off my main business, which was Carlyle. But as I stepped back from being the co-CEO of Carlyle, I thought I could maybe get involved with some sports teams. And the only one I was really interested in was the one in Baltimore, which is the Orioles, because I knew that franchise a bit.”

The path to Rubenstein’s ownership of the Orioles was a gradual one.

David Rubenstein
(Photo credit: Chris Ullman)

“I was teaming up with Ted Leonsis, who owns the Washington Capitals and the Washington Wizards … and I kind of agreed I would maybe support him if he tried to buy the Orioles, and I would be part of his group. But he tried for a while and it didn’t work out. And then John Angelos came to see me — he knew of me a bit from Ted Leonsis’ efforts — and said maybe I should just buy myself a small part of the Orioles. And I thought about it, and I went back and said I would be interested, but I’d like a path to eventual control. And then to my surprise, he came back and said maybe they’d be willing to sell control sooner than I thought,” Rubenstein said.

For Rubenstein, the decision to become the Orioles’ owner came down to one thing: his love of his native city.

“The reason I did it was in part philanthropic,” he said. “I thought that Baltimore, where my parents were born in, my parents were married in, my parents raised me in — I was born there, my parents were buried there, I’m going to be buried there — I thought I hadn’t done enough for Baltimore relative to what I’d done in Washington, D.C., or other parts of the country. So, I thought if I could buy the Orioles and help be part of the renaissance of Baltimore and revive the team a bit, I could maybe fulfill an obligation to Baltimore that I felt I had. That was the real motivation.”

“I don’t want to lose money, but I don’t expect that it’s going to be my most successful investment ever, and I expect that it’ll be in my family long after I’m gone,” Rubenstein added.

David Rubenstein greeting Baltimore Orioles fans
(Photo credit: Chris Ullman)

“There are 30 teams and only one is going to win every year,” he said. “We haven’t had a World Series championship since 1983. We’ve had three of them. We’ve been to the World Series six times, but we lost three of them. 1983 was a long time ago, so I’m hoping that the team can get energized and win a World Series. But it’s obviously a bit of a crapshoot to get to the final games and win.”

How does someone who’s involved in so many things successfully juggle multiple projects simultaneously? “Well, actually, I’m a triplet and I have two identical other brothers that do some of this stuff,” Rubenstein said jokingly, before taking a serious look at how he manages everything effectively.

“When you’re doing what you want to do, and you enjoy it, it’s not work,” he said. “Work is when you don’t really enjoy something but you feel you need to do it. Everything I’m doing now, I really like, so it’s just a question of, at some age, you can’t do everything you want to do because the body slows down. But right now, I’m not big on vacations, I’m not big on many things that people do to relax, and so everything I’m doing kind of relaxes me. So, reading books, writing books, doing TV shows, interviews, it’s relaxing to me; maybe it keeps my brain sharp, so I enjoy it.

“My father retired when he was 55 years old. I’m 20 years older, and I’m working as hard as I possibly can on things. I enjoy what I’m doing, so I don’t regard it as work. And it kind of relaxes me to do things like this,” he added.

One thing that Rubenstein really relishes is his role as host of “The David Rubenstein Show,” where he engages in conversation with an array of influential leaders in various fields. Over the years his interview subjects have included Warren Buffett, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Gates, Sylvester Stallone, Oprah Winfrey, Jeff Bezos, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk, Josh Harris, Benjamin Netanyahu, Cal Ripken Jr. and Robert Kraft.

David Rubenstein speaking with Oprah Winfrey during an interview at “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations” event in New York on Dec. 12, 2016.
(Photo credit: Kholood Eid/Bloomberg TV via David Rubenstein)

“Well, it’s always good when you have a live audience, because you can play off the audience,” he said. “If I ask somebody a question in a studio just one-on-one, they might not get some of the jokes I might be asking in the question. So, like when I asked Bill Gates one time in his office, do you think you’d be more successful if you actually had a college degree, he didn’t quite get the joke. But when I’ve asked that question of him in front of an audience, the audience laughs, and then it works better.

“It is said when you get older, you need to keep your brain active,” Rubenstein added. “And there are a number of ways that people are said to be able to do that. One is to do crossword puzzles — I’m not good at that. Learn a foreign language — I have no language skills, which is why I had to do my bar mitzvah probably in phonetic English. Another thing is you learn a musical instrument — I’m tone deaf. So, I substitute all those things for doing interviews, because when you do an interview, you have to prepare, you have to read, you have to engage with the person and you have to be alert. So I do it in part because I enjoy it, but I get to meet a lot of interesting people … a lot of these people probably wouldn’t spend their time with me, but if I’m interviewing them and they want to be on a TV show that I have, then they get to know me and I get to know them. So, I do it for a lot of reasons, but it’s mostly pleasure.”

Rubenstein, who is a student of American history, has amassed an impressive collection of historical artifacts, yet his collection is not for him alone.

David Rubenstein with a 1297 copy of
the Magna Carta which he owns and
has loaned to the National Archives
(Photo credit: Chris Ullman)

“I stumbled into buying [a 1297 copy of] the Magna Carta, which is the only one in private hands and the only one in the United States,” he said. “And once I did that, people started offering me other historic documents. … I think I have the largest collection in the United States of Declarations of Independence, more than the U.S. government. And I lend mine to the U.S. government very often, as I have with the Magna Carta, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and so forth.

“The reason I do it is because the way the human brain has evolved, it hasn’t yet evolved so that if you see a computer slide of the Magna Carta, it’s the same experience as if you see it in person, because if you see it in person, you’re more likely to be educated by a curator, you’re more likely to read about it afterwards,” he added. “And so, I think as a way of teaching people about history, preserving these artifacts is probably not a bad thing to do. And I kind of got into that. And the same thing with fixing buildings like the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, I just think preserving these things, making it better, gets more people knowledge about American history and so forth. So that’s why I do it.”

Whether it’s his activities in the business sector, with the Baltimore Orioles, in the philanthropic world, or in any of his many other pursuits, Rubenstein enjoys what he does and has achieved great success. Yet despite the enormous amount of effort and energy that he exerts in each of his endeavors, in Rubenstein’s eyes, his success is primarily attributable to one thing: serendipity.