“Others before me gave the resources for MIT to become the great institution it was when I got there. I wanted to help do that for somebody else,” says Ben Golub, who recently established the Bennett W. Golub Graduate Fellowship in economics and finance.
“MIT is a great school, and a great school is a combination of great facilities, great teachers, and great students,” he says. “I hope this fellowship will help MIT continue to attract high-quality students.”
Golub is the son of a Polish immigrant who survived the Holocaust. In 2005, he and his father, Aharon, wrote Kaddishel: A Life Reborn, a book about his father’s experiences. Those experiences shaped the life of his family, Ben says. “You learn to take nothing for granted.”
Golub earned three degrees in management from MIT–a bachelor’s in 1978, a master’s in 1982, and a PhD in 1984. He began a career in finance at Lepercq, de Neuflize & Co., a small investment banking firm in New York City. Later, he became a vice president in the mortgage finance department at First Boston, where he established and ran the financial-engineering group for three years. Then, in 1988, he left and, with seven others, founded BlackRock, an investment and risk management company now managing $1.3 trillion in assets. As vice chairman, he is responsible for the risk management of all BlackRock’s investment products. Golub is also the coauthor of Risk Management: Approaches for Fixed Income Markets. Married with three children, he enjoys power boating, skiing, and tennis.
“The reason I chose to make this particular gift is that when I was in graduate school, I actually lost my fellowship for a while,” he says. “It caused me great financial and emotional distress. Since I knew firsthand how difficult it was to be a graduate student without adequate funding, I thought it would be constructive to create a fellowship that would provide funding for someone else to study in peace.
“I’ve been fortunate to be successful in my professional life. It was only right to give back to the school that helped me achieve that success.”
For giving information, contact Stuart Krantz:
617-253-5905; skrantz@mit.edu.
Or visit giving.mit.edu.
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