Talk about charter schools and my eyes glaze over.
Talk about the Carlyle Group — the District-based private-equity firm — trading on its mystique and considerable connections to help charter schools, and I’m in.
I could write philanthropy columns every week if I wanted to, but the Carlyle-charter school tale intrigues me because it’s really about business and deals and connections. The same kind of insider access upon which Carlyle has built its reputation — and its considerable fortune.
Networking is like oxygen to the professional services world, where hefty fees begin with relationships. It seeds the clouds that make the rain.
A Carlyle comer named Cedric Bobo has figured this out. He built a charter school board headhunting firm called Charter Board Partners to find business executives who will donate their time to help District charter schools.
Want to schmooze at some high-powered Carlyle fundraiser? How about the chance to expand your business connections? Been dying to meet that lawyer or accountant or real estate maven?
Through Charter Board Partners, Carlyle has recruited more than 30 professionals from 14 companies including professionals inside Carlyle and outside from some of its most important business relationships.
One school alone has a board whose membership includes executives from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Latham & Watkins, and McKinsey & Co.
Carlyle’s pull helped raise $250,000 for the startup.
“Someone at PriceWaterhouseCoopers took a meeting with us because Carlyle asked them to,” said Carrie Irvin, who is working with Carlyle on the charter schools. “That led to a $50,000 gift. Carlyle opened that door.”
It started with Bobo, 36, a principal in Carlyle’s U.S. buyouts group who was trying to get his 1-year-old son, Aleksandr, into one of the District’s select preschools. He wound up talking to two education reformers, Irvin and Simmons Lettre, who said the schools needed a channel into the business community and asked Bobo for a vehicle to help find people.
So Bobo invented one.
“I put the squeeze on people,” Bobo said. “I say, ‘McKinsey, you are a valuable partner to Carlyle in serving our investors and I want you to become our partner in serving D.C. schools. I call PricewaterhouseCoopers and say, ’You employ tons of people and are part of this community.’ And I don’t call junior vice presidents. I call leading partners.”
Michael Pickrum, chief financial officer at BET Networks, said he was drawn to the project because he believes in education and because he was able to work with high-level professionals.
“I do not network for the sake of networking,” said Pickrum, who is a friend of Bobo’s. “It was not, ‘Hey, I get to work with so-and-so.’ It was knowing that some of the committed, brightest, talented people in the city would be involved. And they were focusing on the issue that I care about.”
David S. Dantzic, a Latham & Watkins attorney who has been working on Carlyle deals for years, said he has been interested in fixing public schools since he was a child talking about the education system with his mother, who was a New York City public schools teacher.
Loading...
Comments