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Carrie Blewitt (703) 744-7816

Carlyle Group’s David M. Rubenstein Honored by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans

Two Maryland High School Scholars also Recognized during 60th Anniversary Celebration

Washington, DC – (February 27, 2007) – The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans announced that David M. Rubenstein, co-founder and managing director of The Carlyle Group, will be presented with the Horatio Alger Award and inducted as a lifetime member of the Association at its 60th anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C. in April.
  
The Association is equally proud to announce two student scholars from Maryland will be honored as Horatio Alger National Scholars.  Horatio Alger scholarship recipients are students who have excelled in education and have overcome adversity. This year’s scholarship recipients from Maryland are Karmena J. Diggs from Springdale and Samuel D. Ramsey from Temple Hills. 

"The 60th anniversary is a time to reflect on six decades of exceptional American achievements, and we look forward to celebrating the successes of the outstanding individuals who will be inducted as Members, and the National Scholars who represent our nation’s most ambitious youth," said Horatio Alger Association President and CEO and ARAMARK Corporation Chairman and CEO, Joseph Neubauer.

The 60th Annual Horatio Alger Awards events will take place in Washington, D.C. on April 12-14, 2007 to honor and induct the Horatio Alger Award recipients. During the events, the Horatio Alger Award winners will meet with 105 high school seniors from around the nation who were selected to receive Horatio Alger National Scholarships, each valued at $20,000. The total amount of college scholarships awarded is more than $12 million annually – an Association milestone. 

The events provide an opportunity for some of the nation’s most impressive and determined young people to learn firsthand about the philosophies and experiences that helped the 2007 Horatio Alger Award recipients surmount significant obstacles to achieve successful lives.

The other new members being inducted in April are Craig R. Barrett, chairman of the board for Intel Corporation; Thomas “Tom” J. Brokaw, former anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News; Jenny and Sid Craig, co-founders of Jenny Craig International; Craig Hall, chairman and founder of Hall Financial Group; Clarence Otis, Jr., chairman and CEO of Darden Restaurants; Richard M. Rosenberg, chairman and CEO of Bank of America (retired); Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks Coffee Company; Roger T. Staubach, former Dallas Cowboy and chairman and CEO of The Staubach Company; and Chris Thomas Sullivan, founder and chairman of OSI Restaurant Partners, Inc.

In preparation for the spring awards, Rubenstein recently had a few words of advice for the high school recipients of the Horatio Alger Scholarship. He said: “If you believe that you are a master of the universe, if you believe that you have accomplished something that nobody else could possibly have accomplished, if you believe that you are better than other people, in the end, you’re going to make a terrible mistake.  So I always try to think back to where I came from, the humble roots that I had, and the kind of modest beginnings that I had, and I think that gives me a great grounding.”

David Rubenstein grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, where his father worked as a clerk for the U.S. Postal Service. At Baltimore’s large City College High School, Rubenstein flourished in a diverse student population.

Rubenstein attended Duke University, graduating magna cum laude in 1970 and earning a law degree in 1973 from the University of Chicago Law School. After an early career with a law firm in New York, Rubenstein became chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. He remained in government to serve as the Carter Administration’s Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.

Rubenstein returned to the private sector, spending seven years at the D.C. law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge, but left to form The Carlyle Group, a private equity investment firm. The Carlyle Group has since grown into one of the world’s largest private equity firms, managing more than $55 billion from 26 offices around the world.

Rubenstein serves as a trustee or board member at organizations including Duke University, the Johns Hopkins University, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

He has also remained committed to philanthropic efforts, with donations in the last two years alone of $7.5 million to Duke University, $5 million to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, $5 million to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, $5 million to the Council on Foreign Relations, and more than $12 million to Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

 About The Horatio Alger Association

Founded in 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans continues to fulfill its mission of honoring the achievements of outstanding individuals in our society who have succeeded in spite of adversity and of encouraging young people to pursue their dreams through higher education. Among the Association’s 300 members are well-known Americans including the noted poet Maya Angelou, author and broadcaster Lou Dobbs, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and television personality Oprah Winfrey.

The Horatio Alger Association offers three annual scholarship programs: the National Scholarship Program for high school seniors, various state scholarship programs and the Horatio Alger Military Veterans Scholarship Program for U.S. veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Award winners receive financial aid counseling and internship placement assistance.
For more information about the scholarships or to find out more about the 2007 Washington events, please call (703) 684-9444 or visit www.horatioalger.org

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