David and Kelly Gerstenhaber
/SOURCE OF WEALTH: Tiger Investment Management, Argonaut Capital
FUNDING AREAS: Health, Education
OVERVIEW: The Gerstenhabers support a variety of health causes, including suicide prevention, animal cancer. They also support education, gifted students, and public schools in poverty-stricken districts.
BACKGROUND: David Gerstenhaber studied economics at Yale University, receiving a Bachelor's and a Master's, as well as a Master's from the University of Cambridge. He is one of many who has worked at Tiger Investment Management, and is one of the first "tiger cubs," leaving to form his own investment firm, Argonaut Capital. Managing $200 million in assets, his fund is large but not huge, and as such his net worth is unknown. His wife, Dr. Kelly Posner-Gerstenhaber, is a bit more visible in the charitable giving scene. She has no apparent role in her financier father Victor Posner’s estate’s foundation, however, though she and other family members have sued to overturn Posner’s will, which left nearly everything to a former girlfriend. But don’t worry: There was still $195 million available in trusts, a portion of which may have gone toward funding Posner-Gerstenhaber’s projects.
ISSUES:
HEALTH: Posner-Gerstenhaber, who is a research scientist at Columbia-Presbyterian, has gained attention for her methods of suicide assessment, and is on the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She is also a Board Member Emeritus of the Animal Cancer Foundation. As for Gerstenhaber himself, so far, his only foray outside the financial world is his role on the board of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, on which he serves alongside his wife.
EDUCATION: Posner-Gerstenhaber is the founder and chairwoman of Turnaround for Children, an organization dedicated to transforming poor-performing public schools in poverty-stricken districts. She also cofounded the Speyer Legacy School, which focuses on gifted children in grades K-8, and makes its facilities available for free to some students.
LOOKING FORWARD: It is rather too early to make predictions, on either the scope of the Gerstenhabers’ interests or of the fortune they are amassing that might one day fund them. Certainly, education and youth development in general will continue to be defining criteria for their involvement in funding or founding organizations. There have been tentative steps toward medical research for both bipeds and quadrupeds, but not, as far as can be ascertained, any cold cash behind it. We’ll have to wait to see what happens when the cub joins ranks with the bigger players in the jungle of Wall Street.
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