Robinson's Way

Sweating the small details helped put Winifred Akande through Georgia State, and details were many the night of May 7, 2009. An intern at the Robinson College of Business, she was anchored in the foyer of the St. Regis Hotel in Buckhead, helping VIP guests check in for the business college's Hall of Fame dinner. By the time she found the seat her boss had assigned her, dinner had started. Her salad was missing. "I'm sorry, I may have eaten yours by mistake," businessman Peter Blum told her, ordering another. She quickly forgot about the baby field greens, Belgian endive and Cajun walnuts dressed with fig-balsamic vinaigrette. She introduced herself around the table, coming to the distinguished couple across from her: the famous Atlanta businessman, J. Mack Robinson, and his wife, Nita. Akande had just found out they would help fund her study abroad trip to South Africa.

How can I put into words how much their gift meant? These people are so lofty and high up. What do I have in common with them? 

Therein lies the mystery of a mythic figure, one whose name is etched, thanks to his $10 million gift, on her school. How to humanize a monumental figure, who fought with "The Greatest Generation," who influenced so much and so many - lest his name become simply words on campus buildings and signs?

The night of May 7, 2009 is one postcard, a small tableau of Robinson's extraordinary impact on the university he briefly attended. Present are friends, colleagues and beneficiaries like Akande - people who help sum up his style, reach and status. These relationships point to Robinson's significant investment and growth - both geographical and human - that will shape the university in the next decades.

Earlier that same evening, at a VIP reception upstairs in the St. Regis, Robinson, whose banking and insurance fortune was valued by Forbes in 2005 at $1 billion, celebrated his 86th birthday with a modest two-layer cake. Now, while he still goes into the office most days, there is more looking back on a remarkable life and its lessons for the next generation - Akande's generation.

 

The St. Regis had been open barely a month when it hosted GSU's 25th Annual Hall of Fame dinner in its Astor Ballroom. The 26-story Buckhead hotel was an offshoot of the New York original founded by the Astors during the Gilded Age, and boasted that "the art of sabering a bottle of champagne is still practiced ... and hand-rolled cigars remain an after dinner staple."

Robinson has dined and stayed at elegant hotels all over the world. He has started, bought and sold countless companies, his most famous being the fashion house he founded with a young French designer named Yves Saint Laurent. Yet Robinson never appears ensconced in these rarified comforts. He carries an air of unforced gentility, formed first in a more provincial Atlanta, where he sold solid, everyday things like newspapers and used cars. His personality has remained unchanged as he built an empire in the intangibles people needed, like credit and insurance. Even as his business ramped up internationally, his gentle nature and easy Southern drawl did not waver.

At the St. Regis, a newer acquaintance greeted him. GSU President Mark Becker, in his fifth month on the job, had been in the same spot where Akande now stood. Shortly after his arrival in Atlanta, Becker lunched with Robinson at the Ritz Carlton, a few blocks from the St. Regis. As Becker strove for the words to acknowledge Robinson's philanthropy, Robinson would have no honorifics.

"I didn't do anything big or important," Robinson told Becker at their lunch. "I'm just a hard-working person from Georgia."

Also greeting Robinson in the St. Regis that night was prominent alumnus A.W. "Bill" Dahlberg (B.B.A. '70). The former Southern Company CEO and president, says he admired Robinson for rising in an era where bootstraps outweighed an M.B.A., where wiring didn't replace face time. Stopping short of saying the pace of today's business world was more likely to produce a Skilling or Madoff, Dahlberg suggested that Robinson's way of building integrity may be even more relevant now as new graduates balance on a tightrope of ethics, transparency and a difficult economy.

"This was a generation that took more than business seriously," Dahlberg says. "They also took society seriously. They wanted to make a difference in the city where they live."

Seven decades earlier, Robinson had taken one course at what was then called Georgia Evening College, before Pearl Harbor interrupted his education. That barest of tethers to the forerunner of Georgia State turned into such a strong cable out of pragmatism. Helping the business college helped Atlanta, which in turn helped his businesses and him personally. "Mack was not a learn-everything-out-of-the-book man," Dahlberg says. "He was more practicalist, if that's a word...and if you want to be successful, you've got to think practicalities."

 

That evening, former GSU President Carl S. Patton not only was inducted into the Hall of Fame but also worked the crowd, feeding the relationships with big givers like Robinson that in turn rippled into a much bigger pool of donors.

Robinson's philanthropy, Patton noted later, drew attention from a deep web of business leaders and contacts who followed his spending like investors follow Warren Buffett. More than one acquaintance has noted Robinson's "E.F. Hutton effect," for his influential gravitas. "Donors check out what other donors give to before they give," says Patton. "They look at others for advice. They want to make sure it's an important cause that other people believe in.

"When one makes that decision, it helps others decide to give. That's why they put the list of the donors in magazines, to validate the organization. And when you name a college or building after someone, you hope that person will inspire others toward philanthropy. If people know the person, that's what makes them give. We all look for validation one way or the other."

That heft of power infused the St. Regis' ballroom like the scent of the bouquets of white roses wafting from the round tables. Photographers snapped photos of Atlanta's current business leaders John Aderhold, A.J. Robinson and Herman J. Russell. Bill Curry stopped by, 11 months into coaching the Panthers' new football team. The crowd listened to speeches by inductees Patton and Neville Isdell, the outgoing CEO of The Coca-Cola Company. The man who would succeed Isdell two months later, Muhtar Kent, also spoke, and shiny red bottle-shaped cans of Coke dotted the place settings, including where a pink-cheeked, hearty Robinson sat.

On a night like this, "A lot of things are said between good friends without words exchanged," Patton said later. What transpired at Robinson's table would change the university's footprint in 2011 and beyond.

 

That Peter Blum ate Akande's salad was not out of character given the comfort level he enjoyed with Robinson, his closest friend. Blum is a real estate investor who connected with Robinson more than 20 years ago through their mutual interest in horse racing. Blum, who studied classics at the University of North Carolina, makes his friends based on deeply shared values, and these values also influence his business decisions.

Robinson and Blum soon found that they complemented each other well. While Blum doesn't like driving in unfamiliar places, Robinson loved driving, so he usually took the wheel when they were together.  Blum reciprocated in his own way, convincing Robinson to break his Chick-fil-A habit every now and then to try Pano's & Paul's.

Blum recognized a depth in Robinson as they traveled to racetracks like Gulfstream, Keeneland, Belmont and Saratoga. They mingled with "a who's who of well-known businessmen," Blum recalls. He remembered hearing Barry Schwartz, the founder of Calvin Klein, call Robinson his hero. Blum watched how Robinson never limited himself to the suite life, but instead reached out to stable workers to make them feel they were VIPs.

"He changed my life for the better," Blum says. "He made me appreciate the goodness in the world. We all get caught up in material things and the tendency to look at goals, objectives and achievements. Mack is such a unique man because his work ethic was not to become the wealthiest, but to uphold a manner of treating people well. He did not say an unkind word even when there were reasons for it."

Robinson's insatiable quest for knowledge impressed Blum. Every night Robinson would read stacks of articles and books. Blum also saw a deep sense of duty the day his teenaged son Josh was to shadow Robinson. Instead, Robinson tutored the boy. "If you go to school, get a good education and work hard," Robinson told Josh, "You will be able to achieve as much as I have."

When Blum tried to thank Robinson for that, he learned his friend's highest value came from being a father of two girls. "If you want to do something nice for someone," Robinson told Blum, "you do it for their children." 

Naturally then, at Blum and Robinson's table at the St. Regis, there would be students. With his $10 million naming bequest in 1998, the largest cash gift in the university history, Robinson had in effect adopted the business students at Georgia State. He was placing a bet on their futures, not unlike thoroughbreds, only the results weren't immediate. He may not live to see the next J. Mack Robinson, but the glimpses greatly pleased him.

That night at the St. Regis, there was Winifred Akande, a sophomore accounting major.

Like Robinson, Akande was an Atlanta native, entering the world in March 1988 only blocks from GSU as a "Grady baby." She had never known anything but a long road to the American Dream. Two years before her birth, her parents had emigrated from Nigeria, with ad-vanced degrees that did little to help them set up here. Her father, Dolapo, drove a taxi and took classes at Georgia State before graduating in business from Mercer and becoming a database administrator and consultant. Her mother, Bola, worked at restaurants and banks while going back to school and becoming a computer programmer for the state Department of Natural Resources. Not all educations are equal, they told their eldest daughter. Make yours count.

So Akande worked. During high school, she became a teller at Washington Mutual, and she left that job right before the 2008 economic meltdown to an take internship in the Robinson College of Business. Her contacts there encouraged her to study abroad in international business and pointed her to the Nita Robinson Scholarship. The Robinsons had endowed these in 2000 to equip students for success in an increasingly diverse, global business world.

The grants, says Robinson College of Business Dean H. Fenwick Huss, build a bridge from Robinson's age, race and wealth to young adults with need and potential mirroring his own six decades before. "He relates to students who are the first generation of their family to go to college, like he was," Huss points out. "He truly enjoys knowing he's had some positive impact on their lives, and truly wants to help them do what he did."

Akande had dreamed big, choosing GSU's priciest study abroad option, almost $6,000 to go to South Africa for 17 days through Cape Town, Pretoria and elsewhere. She would receive credit for studying international tax and management. Family friends had chipped in $20 and $50. Akande wasn't sure she would make the full payment - then word came of the Robinson grant of $2,500.

At the St. Regis, when she saw the couple for the first time across the table, the lump in her throat grew.

They're still in love. See how attentive she is, looking after him. See how essential family is to any success in life?

As Akande began to thank them, she got choked up. "I couldn't help it," she said later. Other Robinson scholars came by to thank the couple, creating an even more emotional encounter.

Across the table, Blum was deeply impressed. He could see Robinson was moved too, as he wished the students the best on their travels. What was past for him was the future for these students. "Mack believes the greatest thing he ever did in his career was investing in the university," Blum says. "There was a certain sense of longing that he did not get an education [like that]." 

The filial bond between Robinson and the students stuck with Blum. He himself felt a deep admiration and loyalty. What could he do to honor his friend? What could he give a man who had so much? If you want to do something nice for someone, do it for their children.

For years, Georgia State had reached out to Blum for a single purpose that had nothing to do with fancy dinner invitations. Blum held a 2.45-acre prime block next to the campus. The wedge at John Wesley Dobbs Avenue and Park Place, between Woodruff Park and the Georgia-Pacific building, had taken Blum four decades to painstakingly assemble from 15 tracts and a web of leaseholds.

"The Kennedys owned the Chicago Merchandise Mart for more than 50 years," Blum says. "Their strategy was to buy good real estate and hold it. I'm not a motivated seller, either."

He still has an unsigned contract from 1989, he says, for $36.9 million.

The university, especially under urban land planner Patton, kept after Blum. In one meeting, Patton rolled out a big map, pointed to Blum's plat and declared it GSU's "best opportunity to really cement its future," Blum recalls.

Says Patton, "Ted Turner said he only wanted to buy land adjacent to his, and by definition, we looked for any piece that touches Georgia State. You can't have a landlocked campus. And everyone wants to be on Peachtree."

Blum envisioned passing the land to his son, and sought advice from the man who had become somewhat like a father to him. Robinson refused, only speaking of it in an unexpected phone call to Blum one night about three years ago. "Peter, Georgia State very much wants to own your property. They asked me to talk to you," Blum recalls him saying. "I told them I wasn't about to, and you need to hear that from me first. Don't feel any pressure from me to sell to the school. I am not going to interfere."

The job of winning over Blum fell to a young alum connected to Robinson through his diploma. Jamie Hargather, an agent of Wilson, Hull and Neal Real Estate, was a 2005 graduate of the Robinson School of Business. Hargather was both professionally and personally driven to help shape his alma mater's geography. A soccer player for the Panthers, Hargather saw loyalty and trust as his keys to business success, much like Robinson had at his age. Hargather was already banking on his patience to make the deal eventually happen.   

As time passed, the emotion Blum felt for his friend couldn't help but transfer to the property. The more Blum got to know Patton, then Huss and Becker, the more he saw why Robinson liked and respected them and adopted his belief that the "best days for Georgia State lie ahead." For Blum, the deal was no longer strictly a business transaction. 

"Peter has a tremendous relationship with Mack and that was influential," Hargather says. "We wanted Peter to feel really comfortable about selling, and that played a decent amount of influence. It was part of the deal. J. Mack's name was on the business school, and this land is where the business school [and law school] was going to be."

In December 2010 - almost two years after the St. Regis dinner - Blum's gift became official. He sold the block for $17.8 million in a transaction described as part sale, part gift.  In February, Robinson told Atlanta Business Chronicle columnist Maria Saporta that the block reminded him of his early days downtown. He would look out from his fourth floor office in the Candler Building and see the hotels that occupied the property when Blum first started assembling the block. He was pleased that the acquisition did not "disturb the friendship" with Blum.

Meanwhile, Akande is wrapping up a Master of Taxation degree at the Robinson College of Business and planning another study abroad trip this summer to Russia. She's taken a job with Ernst & Young, and will look into its global exchange program to India. "I may be training people on U.S. tax law, and I would have never considered anything like that if I had not studied abroad - if I hadn't gotten that [Robinson] scholarship," she says.

Eventually, she would like to return to Atlanta and invest personally at Georgia State, as a mentor or maybe more, depending on how her career takes off. "I have a strong sense of paying it forward," she says.

With Robinson as her example, Akande will work out those details.

Michelle Hiskey is a freelance writer based in Decatur, Ga.

 

International Exposure Jeremy Dollar, who expects to graduate in December 2012 with degrees in finance and philosophy, in Paris last summer studied with help from the Nita Robinson Scholarship. More than 140 countries are represented in Georgia State's student body, and that diversity helps pique the interest of locally grown students to see the rest of the world. The Nita Robinson Scholarship has helped business students like Jeremy Dollar and Dionne Corn travel while earning academic credit. Dollar spent May 2010 in France at the Institut d'Administration des Entreprises de Paris (IAE de Paris), the Sorbonne's graduate business school. He also took a side trip to Brussels to visit the European Union. The two-week Maymester program earned him the six elective credits needed to complete his finance degree at the Robinson College of Business. This was also his first trip outside the United States. "Everyone seemed a little bit more at ease than they do in America, and it almost makes them more successful," says Dollar, 26, also a philosophy major. "They're not so stressed about the minor details of everything." Corn, 23, packaged the Robinson scholarship with two more grants to fund her study trip to Greece and Turkey in the summer of 2009. It was her first-ever use of a passport. The adventure showed her ancient ruins and current roots. "I was most influenced by the Greeks' modern-day family life," Corn said. "They really have strong family units there, generations in the same household that you don't really see here as much." That picture stuck with her as she wrapped up her accounting degree at GSU and remains to pursue a masters in the same. "Study abroad speaks to dealing with diversity and being sensitive to what different cultures bring to the table," she says. "In [international] accounting and auditing, you have to interact with everyone." Without the Robinson funding, both Corn and Dollar say their horizons would still be limited to the view from Atlanta. "I've been anxious to travel ever since," Corn said. "I want to see what the world has to offer. What I had only seen on the Internet was even more amazing in person."