Warren Hellman

Warren Hellman was born to a Jewish family in New York and spent his early childhood in Manhattan. The son of Ruth (née Koshland) and Marco "Mick" Hellman, During World War II, his family moved to Vacaville, California, where his father served as a Major in the Army and his mother worked as a Women Airforce Service Pilot, flying military planes from aircraft factories to bases. After the war, they moved to San Francisco, where he graduated from Lowell High School. In 1951, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he played for the school's water polo team and majored in economics, graduating in 1955. In 1959, he graduated with an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. ==Career==

After school, he worked in investment banking at Lehman Brothers becoming a partner at age 28, the youngest in the firm's history. In 1973, he was named president and head of investment banking and also head of the Investment Banking Division and Chairman of Lehman Corporation. In 1977, he moved to Boston and co-founded with Paul J. Ferri a venture capital firm, Hellman, Ferri Investment Associates (later renamed Matrix Partners), an early-stage investor in SanDisk and Apple. In 1984, he moved back to San Francisco and co-founded the buyout firm, Hellman & Friedman with Tully Friedman where he served as chairman of the firm as well as a member of the Firm's Investment and Compensation Committees. Hellman & Friedman's strategy was to buy companies heavy on intellectual capital (typically financial services or software companies) and light on physical assets (such as manufacturers) with strong cash flows that needed operational improvements. In 1995, the firm purchased Levi Strauss & Co. from 250 family shareholders and consolidated it among four men including Hellman and then-CEO Robert D. Haas. The company reduced its debt and improved its earnings. ==Family history and philanthropy==

Though his fortune was largely self-made, Hellman was the great-grandson of Isaias W. Hellman, a prominent early California banker (President of Wells Fargo Bank), philanthropist, and a founding father of the University of Southern California. Isaias Hellman's sister-in-law was married to Mayer Lehman, one of the founders of Lehman Brothers. Warren Hellman's mother, the former Ruth Koshland, was the granddaughter of Jesse Koshland, and great-granddaughter of Simon Koshland, pioneer wool merchants in San Francisco (a nephew of Jesse Koshland, Daniel E. Koshland Sr., served as the CEO of Levi Strauss & Co). Hellman was married to Patricia Christina "Chris" Sander; When he died in 2011, he was remembered by SFGate as "the San Francisco financier whose willingness to fund an unlikely range of passions made him a force in Bay Area politics, education and music," and as a "renaissance man." ==Other affiliations==

Hellman served in the U.S. Army from 1955 through 1957. An avid skier, Hellman co-founded Stratton Mountain School in 1972. As a supporter of the then U.S. Ski Educational Foundation, Hellman served both as a trustee and president of the U.S. Ski Team from the late ’70s to mid-’80s. Hellman won the national championship in Ride and Tie racing (in his age category) five times and competed in the western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile ultramarathon. Hellman was the chair of the board of trustees for Mills College from 1982 to 1992, and as a result of protests reversed the college's decision to go co-ed in 1990. Hellman was a Director of D.N.& E. Walter & Co. and Sugar Bowl Corporation. He was also a member of the advisory board of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley. In 1997, he was inducted into the American Academy of Achievement. In 2005, Hellman was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hellman and latterly the Hellman Trust Foundation is the primary sponsor and provided funding for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. In 2011, Speedway Meadow was renamed Hellman Hollow to honor his history of philanthropy and civic involvement in San Francisco. Hellman was a donor and supporter of Jewish Vocational Services (JVS), a nonprofit organization that helps people transform their lives through work. Hellman was the chairman of the Board of The Bay Citizen, a non-profit news organization focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Citizen was founded with a $5 million contribution from the Hellman Family Foundation. He formerly served as a Director of numerous portfolio companies, including Eller Media Company, Nasdaq Stock Market, Young & Rubicam and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. ==References==