Robert K. Steel: Leadership Across the Private, Public, and Nonprofit Sectors

In this episode of Capital for Good we speak with Bob Steel, partner and vice chairman of Perella Weinberg Partners, whose career has spanned the pinnacles of business, government and nonprofit leadership. Following nearly three decades at Goldman Sachs, Steel held senior roles at the US Treasury, as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance under President George W. Bush, and in New York City government as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development under Mike Bloomberg; was CEO of Wachovia Corporation and Perella Weinberg; and along the way has served on numerous boards, corporate and civic, including at major universities like Duke, important ideas and policy organizations like the Aspen Institute, and several of New York City's anchor institutions.

We begin with some of the formative individuals and institutions that would shape Steel's trajectory: his parents, who set an example of service to their North Carolina community; the attention of Dr. Joel Fleishman, a Duke Professor who challenged Steel to become a more engaged student; and the opportunity to join Goldman Sachs in 1976 when John Whitehead and John Weinberg took over the leadership of the firm. "I got on the bus at the right time," Steel says.

Steel describes what it was like to work at Goldman Sachs in a period of extraordinary growth and globalization. Over close to three decades, he built several businesses across the US and Europe — "multiple careers in one institution" — and ultimately served as the firm's vice chairman and member of its management committee. "The moral of the story," he observes, "is that well-led firms that are growing create opportunities that are pretty special."

In 2006, at the urging of fellow Goldman Sachs partner — and recently confirmed US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson — Steel went to Treasury to serve as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. Within a year, the country was in the throes of the financial crisis, and with the support of Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, Steel and his colleagues labored to prevent the worst impacts of the crisis on the American people, and to begin to steer the economy to more stable ground.

After Treasury, Steel returned to the private sector as CEO of Wachovia, where he led the bank's sale to Wells Fargo. Soon after Mike Bloomberg recruited him to serve as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, where he would oversee the administration's five borough economic development strategy and job creation efforts across more than a dozen ci