We have rejected the idea since our first projects in the Himalaya 35 years ago that anyone sitting in the United States or other developed countries would necessarily have better ideas for lasting impact than people living in Nepal, Tibet, Tibetan refugee camps across the region, and India. Quite the opposite.
I was very fortunate early in my career as a securities analyst to inherit $10,000 from my grandmother, but the outcome could have been disastrous.
I was researching some electronics companies at the time that had caught my eye, and I decided to invest all that money in their shares. And that wasn’t all. I figured I’d be really smart and buy even more shares on margin—that is, borrowing another $10,000 to double down and use the shares I paid for in cash as collateral for the debt.
When I was an undergrad at University of California, Berkeley, many students took a philosophy class with a professor named Stephen Pepper because it was supposed to be an easy A. It was held in a big lecture hall, and if people went, they often spent the class dozing. But I was intrigued.
Doing the right thing will enrich your life beyond whatever numbers might end up in your financial records.
In 1964, the year Congress passed the historic Civil Rights Act, I heard about a group of investors who were having trouble raising money to start a bank in Harlem even though Jackie Robinson had signed on as chairman.
Most ideas that spark development programs with lasting impact “didn’t come from us” at the American Himalayan Foundation, Richard explains in these remarks at the Brookings Institution, the prestigious Washington, D.C. think tank. “They came from people in the villages, and we listened to what they want.”
What is the secret to successful investing in China? Finding the right partners, people you can trust. “Our returns have been very good,” Richard tells Bloomberg TV anchor David Westin. “We have a good team and a simple bet that is still the same: belief in Asia’s growing middle class.”
The people of the Himalaya and Asia broadly have been two of my biggest passions for more than fifty years.
During that time, no nation in the world has done more than China to help its people out of poverty. We should celebrate this. At the same time, no nation in South Asia has suffered more from mistaken Chinese policies than Tibet. We cannot accept this.
Alastair Hall stood six-foot four. Everyone called him Shorty.
He was only the fourth partner in the history of Sutro & Company, a San Francisco brokerage firm founded in the 1870s and my first employer out of grad school.
There are two things you need to know about Shorty. He was the epitome of integrity. And, in many ways, he was the father of my business career. He taught me the importance of being consistent, forming opinions that are rooted in an abiding philosophy of life. We had very different personalities – he reserved, methodical, and wise, and I hard-charging, unpredictable, and passionate. We had a close friendship.
In this interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Richard Blum explains how sex traffickers scheme to enslave thousands of Nepali girls each year: “Somebody comes along, saying ‘we have a husband for you…’ or ‘we have a good job for you in India.’ These girls wind up in brothels, and they can’t get out.’’
The sex trafficking of Nepali girls was not well understood when this scourge caught my attention in the early 1990s. I had been traveling to Asia for more than a decade, keeping up with a growing portfolio of investments, getting a close look at projects supported by our American Himalayan Foundation, and hearing from the Dalai Lama about pressing needs of the Tibetan people.