Howard H. Newman – 50th Reunion Essay

Howard H. Newman

80 Central Park West

New York, NY 10023

hnewman@pinebrookpartners.com

914-234-1250

Spouse(s): Maryam Razavi (1988)

Child(ren): Elizabeth (1979); Zeena (1969)

Grandchild(ren): Isabelle Richter (2012) and Dandelion Cohen (2012)

Education: Yale 1969 (BA and MA); Cambridge (1969–1971); Harvard PhD (1974)

Career: Investment Banking: Morgan Stanley1974–1983; Private Equity/Venture Capital: Warburg Pincus 1984–2006; Pine Brook Road Partners 2006 and continuing

Avocations: Using plants to sequester carbon dioxide; venture philanthropy at the local level; hiking, bicycling, and traveling

College: Silliman

Self-reflection has never been my strong suit, so it will come as no surprise to many of you that I am happy with the way my life turned out.

When I look at my life, however, I am struck by how much serendipity—not forethought—shaped it. Yale accepted me, so I went. Morgan Stanley was the only investment bank to offer me a job, so I accepted it. When asked to leave 10 years later, I joined Warburg Pincus without either of us knowing what the other did. When I left 22 years later, I started Pine Brook principally to avoid failing retirement.

Happenstance was also important in my personal life. I met my first wife on the last voyage of the SS United States and I met my second wife at Club Med 10 years later. Maryam is an Iranian Shiite whose family traces its descent back to Mohammed. Our marriage is the union of two cultures: the capitalist and the psychoanalyst.

How did these things happen to a nice Jewish boy from York, Pennsylvania?

These thoughts come to me as I counsel younger colleagues. They are asked to make binding choices long before they have been given an opportunity to explore themselves and their interests. How hard it must be to be young today and feel those pressures so intensely; and how sad, both for that generation and for the broader community as well.

Yale was very important to my life, principally because it taught me the difference between learning things and learning how to think. Philosophy, not economics, was the core of my Yale education.

Sadly, when I read philosophy today, I discover that 45 years of commerce reinforced looking for new information, and it is now nearly impossible to follow a logical essay. Sadly, our nation now places too much emphasis on the former, and not enough on the latter, and we see the results in the press every day.

I am ready to stop creating and focus instead on consuming life. I use my “vacation eyes” every day, not just when traveling. I am lucky to have my health, and plan to take advantage of that blessing as long as it lasts. The world is a beautiful and wondrous place; it would be wrong not to experience as much of it as possible, at least until Maryam and I board the spaceship to Mars. Ideas I hope my children will teach my grandchildren:

1) let’s go down that road and see where it takes us;

2) there is no such thing as an uninteresting fact;

3) the iron law of 168 governs;

4) civilization is voluntary compliance with largely artificial norms;

5) the cost of doing A is not doing B;

6) give somebody a chance and be surprised;

7) win-win is better than zero sum;

8) see the world through somebody else’s eyes

9) any idea worth having can be logically defended; and

10) plants: nature’s solution to climate change.