David Tepper

NET WORTH: $11.6 billion

SOURCE of WEALTH: Founder, Appaloosa Management

FUNDING AREAS: Education, Hunger, Poverty

OVERVIEW: One of the highest paid Americans in recent years, David Tepper has been a major contributor to education, particularly to schools with which his family is affiliated, and to fighting for education reform in New Jersey. He's also on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, and is particularly interested in fighting hunger. His foundation held $162 million in assets at the end of 2013, and gave out $5.9 million that year. 

BACKGROUND: Tepper grew up in a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, and attended University of Pittsburgh, where he earned his BA in economics.After graduation, he stayed close to his family in Pittsburgh and worked at Equibank before getting his MBA at Carnegie Mellon. After graduate school he continued to move between workaday jobs at Republic Steel, Keystone Mutual, and Goldman Sachs, before his career started to take off. At Goldman, Tepper quickly rose to manager of the high-yield desk, but after failing to make partner, founded his own hedge fund, Appaloosa, in 1993. Appaloosa now manages $12 billion in distressed debt funds, and is known for buying debt from companies like Enron, WorldCom, Conseco, and most recently a number of big banks during the 2008 financial crisis while they tanked.  The result has been that fund, and Tepper's personal wealth along with it, has been increasing by leaps and bounds in recent years,  making $3.5 billion in 2013 alone. He also owns a piece of the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team he's cheered on since he was a kid.

PHILOSOPHY: When he made between $2 to $3 billion in 2010, Tepper began seriously planning his philanthropic strategies. He's not in a rush to give his money away though, and plans to get involved in charity work first hand so he can see what works, and what's a waste of resources. "It would be better if I took responsibility," Tepper says. Better, presumably, than blindly handing over money just to stroke his ego. Currently in his 50s, Tepper plans to shift more and more of his attention to charitable giving each year.

ISSUES:  

HUNGER & POVERTY: Tepper sits on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a philanthropic organization that raises money from hedge fund leaders and funnels it to New York anti-poverty efforts. He also is particularly interested in addressing hunger; his foundation has given $15 million to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, and made substantial grants to Feeding America.

EDUCATION: In 2003, Tepper gave $55 million to Carnegie Mellon, and they thanked him by renaming their business school the Tepper School of Business. In 2013, he gave the school another $67 million, bringing his total contribution to more than $125 million. He and his wife Marlene have also made large donations to the University of Pittsburgh, and given $3.4 million to Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of Arts, his wife's alma mater. He's been a major contributor to Teach for America as well, and his own Political Action Committee, Better Education for Kids, which is active in the movement for educational reform in New Jersey, advocating for controversial changes. Along with another hedge fund manager, Alan Fournier, Tepper made a $3 million commitment to help improve public school leadership in Jersey City in 2014. He has enemies in the state's teachers union and the legislature, but no plans to back off. "I'm committed to getting this done," says Tepper, and he's putting his money where his mouth his. 

HEALTH: Tepper has not zeroed in any single cause in the health arena. Instead, his giving in this area has been limited to token donations, generally in the $25,000-$50,000 range, to leading organizations that support research and awareness for a variety of diseases, such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Ace Lymphoma, and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The foundation's largest donations in this area have been to the Phoenix House, a drug abuse rehabilitation center, which receives donations of $100,000 or more on an annual basis. 

LOOKING FORWARD: If Tepper continues to make the sort of money he has in the last few years, he's going to have quite a large pile of cash to give away. And all signs point toward him doing just that before long. In his 50s, he's not in a huge hurry though, so it may be a few years before we seem him really start to uncork his fortune. When he does, expect to see efforts to improve education and fight hunger on a larger scale. 

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