Tom Steyer

  • Born: June 27, 1957
  • Place of Birth: New York, New York

Businessperson, activist

Education: Yale University; Stanford Business School

Background

Thomas Fahr Steyer was born in 1957 in New York City, the youngest of three boys born to Roy H. Steyer and Marnie (née Fahr). His father was a Yale University graduate who worked as a litigator for the elite Sullivan & Cromwell law firm. His mother was a writer and producer for the NBC evening news, and later became an educator teaching in Harlem. She also created reading programs for the New York school system and taught remedial reading at the Brooklyn House of Detention.

Steyer attended elite private schools in New York, including the Buckley School in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He went on to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, one of the nation’s most exclusive college preparatory schools. Steyer then attended Yale University, where he majored in economics and political science and graduated summa cum laude in 1979. He went on to earn a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 1983.

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Business and Investment

Steyer’s first position was in 1979 with Morgan Stanley, where he spent two years working as a financial analyst. Following the completion of his MBA in 1983, Steyer spent a summer working on Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign. That same year, Steyer began working for Goldman Sachs in New York under the supervision of Robert Rubin, who later served as US secretary of the treasury under President Bill Clinton. At Goldman Sachs, Steyer worked in risk arbitrage, a type of hedge fund investment strategy based on investing in corporate mergers.

In January of 1986, Steyer left Goldman Sachs to form his own investment firm, Farallon Capital Management, named for a California coastal shoal known for its population of sharks. Beginning with penny stock investments, Steyer’s firm earned a reputation in merger arbitrage, real estate investment, and credit investment. Farallon also invested in educational institutions, including a major investment program with Steyer’s alma mater Yale.

In 2007 Steyer and his wife opened OneCalifornia Bank, later called One PacificCoast Bank and then Beneficial State Bank. The bank specializes in providing commercial loans and banking assistance to low- and medium-income businesses in the Bay Area. The bank also invests in nonprofit institutions and supports environmental initiatives and sustainable environmental businesses. In 2008 Steyer and his wife donated $41 million to create the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford University, which focuses on developing alternative and renewable energy technology.

Steyer operated Farallon Capital Management for nearly twenty-seven years, building the company from an estimated worth of $8 million to $20 billion, with his own personal worth exceeding $1.6 billion in 2020. In August 2010, Steyer and Taylor, along with thirty-seven other American billionaires, signed a "giving pledge" agreement to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable causes. In 2023, Forbes reported Steyer's net worth at $1.5 billion.

Environmental Activism

While Steyer became increasingly interested in environmental activism in the 2010s, Farallon Capital Management had significant investments in the coal and petroleum industries, including investments in British Petroleum (BP) and coal-mining operations in Australia. One of the company’s largest single partnerships was a $220 million investment in the oil and gas company Nexen in September of 2012. Farallon’s investments supported development of the Canadian oil sands, a project that Steyer later opposed as an environmental activist.

In October 2012 Steyer retired from Farallon, calling the decision a reflection of his evolving personal morals, and announced his intention to become an environmental activist. Some news agencies criticized Steyer’s environmentalist credibility due to his company’s significant former investments in the petroleum industry. While Steyer officially retired in 2012, it took until 2014 for him to completely divest his holdings in fossil-fuel companies.

After leaving Farallon, Steyer began investing in environmental initiatives and Democratic Party candidates with strong records of environmental advocacy. Reporters have called Steyer a liberal alternative to the conservative billionaires, brothers Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, owners of Koch Industries. The Koch brothers have donated millions to support arguments against global warming and are famous for investing in the careers of conservative Republican politicians. Steyer became nationally known during the 2014 midterm elections, to which he was the largest individual financial contributor. Though Steyer donated nearly $57 million of his own funds to various Democratic campaigns through his political action committee (PAC) NextGen Climate, the 2014 midterms resulted in a national shift toward conservative politicians in Congress and state governments. In interviews, Steyer said he believed his investments increased the visibility of the global warming issue in the election.

While some political analysts speculated that Steyer would run for the Senate seat vacated by Barbara Boxer in 2016, Steyer said in in interviews that he would not run. In 2015 Steyer said his primary political goal was to oppose the Keystone Pipeline XL project, which involved transporting larger volumes of bitumen from the Canadian oil sands.

Steyer ardently opposed Republican businessman Donald Trump both during Trump's presidential campaign and after his election, and created another PAC, Need to Impeach. During Trump's presidency, he did seek political office, though not the one that observers expected: Steyer, widely expected to enter the gubernatorial race in California in 2018, instead sought to challenge Trump for the presidency in 2020. In addition to emergency action on climate change, Steyer's progressive platform included commitments on voting rights, health and environmental protection, a living wage, and eliminating corporate influence over politics. He came under fire for spending tens of millions of his own dollars and failed to gain sufficient traction in a crowded field of Democratic contenders to win in major early races. After seven months, Steyer ended his campaign in late February 2020. He endorsed frontrunner Joe Biden; dismantled Need to Impeach, since Trump had been impeached but not removed in late 2019; and raised funds for Biden and Democratic congressional candidates.

Steyer went on to lead the California Task Force on Business and Job Recovery, an advisory group to Governor Gavin Newsom formed as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic wreaked havoc on the state economy. He also co-chaired Biden’s Climate Engagement Advisory Council.

In September 2021, Steyer launched Galvanize Climate Solutions, a climate investment fund, with his partner Kathryn Hall. He also advocated for change, both on a personal level and globally, to address climate change. He was critical of all aspects of the oil and gas industry, from the companies that extracted and produced it to the banks, insurers, politicians, and others who benefited financially and thus resisted efforts to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. However, he said he was heartened by the foothold the reliable energy industry had in the market and the rapid advances it was making. He explained his thoughts on the issue in a 2024 book, Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We'll Win the Climate War.

Impact

As one of the wealthiest Democratic Party donors in the 2010s, Steyer has significant political influence and has sought to establish himself as a politician in his own right. His emphasis on the climate change crisis in his failed presidential bid nonetheless brought additional attention to the issue, as did his book and other efforts.

Personal Life

Steyer met his wife, Kathryn "Kat" Taylor, at Stanford University and the couple married on the university campus in August 1986. They have four children, Sam, Gus, Evi, and Henry, and own an 1,800-acre cattle ranch in Pescadero, California, called TomKat Ranch.

Bibliography

Barbaro, Michael, and Coral Davenport. "Aims of Donor Are Shadowed by Past in Coal." New York Times, 4 July 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/us/politics/prominent-environmentalist-helped-fund-coal-projects.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Guthrie, Julian. "Couple Invest in Social Change Not Scene." SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Feb. 2013, www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Couple-invest-in-social-change-not-scene-4303535.php. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Hagan, Joe. "Tom Steyer: An Inconvenient Billionaire." Men’s Journal, Mar. 2014, www.mensjournal.com/adventure/tom-steyer-an-inconvenient-billionaire-20140218. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Leonnig, Carol D. et al. "Tom Steyer’s Slow, and Ongoing, Conversion from Fossil-Fuels Investor to Climate Activist." Washington Post, 9 June 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tom-steyers-slow-and-ongoing-conversion-from-fossil-fuels-investor-to-climate-activist/2014/06/08/6478da2e-ea68-11e3-b98c-72cef4a00499‗story.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Marinucci, Carla. "Billionaire Tom Steyer Won’t Run for Boxer’s Senate Seat." SF Gate, 22 Jan. 2015, www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Billionaire-Steyer-won-t-run-for-Senate-6033528.php. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

"Meet Tom." Tom Steyer, www.tomsteyer.com/meet-tom. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Rutenberg, Jim. "How Billionaire Oligarchs Are Becoming Their Own Political Parties." New York Times, 17 Oct. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/magazine/how-billionaire-oligarchs-are-becoming-their-own-political-parties.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Siders, David. “Tom Steyer Meets with Biden Officials, Interested in a Role in Administration.” Politico, 23 Sept. 2020, www.politico.com/news/2020/09/23/steyer-biden-administration-appointment-420046. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Steyer, Tom. "Why I Left Billions on the Table to Fight for Climate Change." Time, 22 May 2024, time.com/collection/time100-voices/6980235/tom-steyer-climate-activism/. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Voorhees, Josh. "How Green Was My Election." Slate, 3 Nov. 2014, slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/11/tom-steyer-spent-57-million-to-get-voters-to-care-about-climate-change-it-didnt-work.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.