Blog - Art Samberg - Weebly

The Routes to Uhuru Peak on Mount Kilimanjaro

12/21/2018

Art J. Samberg, a widely known investment professional and philanthropist with multiple charitable interests, has made major gifts in particular to Columbia Business School, where the Arthur J. Samberg Institute for Teaching Excellence has offered programs on course development and innovative instruction. Now the head of the family office Hawkes Financial in Katonah, New York, Art Samberg additionally stands out for having summited Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro in 2000.

Africa’s highest mountain at more than 19,000 feet--and the highest freestanding mountain on earth--Mount Kilimanjaro attracts tens of thousands of aspiring climbers every year.

The mountain’s snow-and-glacier-capped heights include three individual volcanic cones. Mountaineers often cite Kibo as the most interesting, since its Uhuru Peak marks Kilimanjaro’s highest point. Kibo is also the only one of the three cones to qualify as a dormant, rather than an extinct, volcano.

The climb to Uhuru Peak can vary over several different routes, each with its own degree of difficulty. Experienced climbers note that the Rongai and Marangu pathways are the easiest, with the Lemosho, Shira, and Machame being more challenging.

Standing atop Uhuru Peak, a climber can experience the thrill of looking out over swaths of peaks reaching to the sky, and the gleaming snow beneath.

How Venture Capital Helps Entrepreneurs Grow Companies

10/12/2018

A former chairman and CEO at Pequot Capital, Arthur “Art” J. Samberg is the owner of Hawkes Financial Group. Through this family office, Art J. Samberg now invests venture capital in startups.

Venture capital has contributed immensely to the growth of startups in the United States and around the globe. The first and most obvious way this has happened is through capital to meet operational needs. Good ideas need a lot of capital to get them started in the market. Venture capital provides entrepreneurs and innovators with the financial staying power they need to conduct market research, secure patents, launch products, hire teams, and grow companies.

These funds are by no means trivial. The National Venture Capital Association estimates that $22 billion in venture capital is invested in US companies every year and over 20 percent of the US GDP is contributed by companies that were helped by venture capital.

Apart from funding, venture capital builds a bridge between entrepreneurs and investors, allowing the former to gain from the knowledge and experience of the latter. Whenever entrepreneurs need help with fundraising, hiring executives, or dealing with regulators, investors can provide the knowledge, networks, or resources to effectively navigate past these hurdles.

The Carbon-Neutral Potential of Nuclear Fusion Energy

9/28/2018

Arthur “Art” Samberg is a technology-focused investor who guides Hawkes Financial, LLC, a family office. Among Art J. Samberg’s high profile responsibilities include chairing Tri Alpha Energy, a nuclear fusion startup that has achieved significant funding.

Plasma-driven fusion has long been hypothesized as a source of unlimited, carbon-neutral energy. It is distinct from the familiar nuclear fission process in which large uranium-235 atoms are split into more minute atoms, in the process generating significant energy. Drawbacks of this approach include the scarcity of uranium and the expense and safety hazards associated with the technology. A major issue is that radioactivity stays present in nuclear waste for centuries.

Nuclear fusion represents an opposite reaction, through which small atoms are squeezed together to make larger atoms. This creates tremendous energy, approximately three to four times more than fission, from a small amount of matter. It replicates the process by which the sun constantly generates energy, with hydrogen nuclei jammed together with heavier elements, albeit in vastly larger quantities.

The potential advantages of this process includes no pollution produced and minute amounts of radioactive waste. In cases where a malfunction occurs, there is no meltdown risk, as the reactor simply shuts down. The challenges of fusion are that it requires extreme temperatures and speeds for atoms to shake off electrons and fuse with other atoms.

First Year Forward Helps Students Navigate First Year of College

8/21/2018

Arthur “Art” J. Samberg serves as the owner of Hawkes Financial LLC, his family office, in New York, where he oversees investment ventures and the management of family funds. A member of several philanthropic boards, Art Samberg belongs to the national advisory board of Peer Forward, formerly known as College Summit. Peer Forward offers programs and resources that help students pursue opportunities in higher education, such as the First Year Forward program.

The free program is designed for incoming college freshmen enrolled in two or four-year degree tracks at an accredited college or university. Program participants receive weekly text messages during their first year of college on a wide variety of topics, ranging from FAFSA information and available student resources to mid-term management and staying healthy on campus. Weekly messages focus on helping students navigate their first year on campus and improve their experience. First Year Forward Ambassadors staff the program, many of whom are Peer Forward Alumni.

Historic Hudson Valley Landmark Preservation

8/29/2017

The owner of Hawkes Financial, LLC (a family office) in Katonah, New York, Arthur "Art" J. Samberg came into the family investment sector after his time spent as the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Pequot Capital Management, a firm he founded. In conjunction with his professional pursuits, Art Samberg has supported many charitable and philanthropic organizations, including the Historic Hudson Valley.

A non-profit educational organization, Historic Hudson Valley, protects, restores, and promotes various historical landmarks throughout the Hudson Valley region, to the entertainment and benefit of the public. Currently, the organization owns and restores many sites of historical significance or architectural distinction.

The association offers tours for visitors of all ages, as well as children’s educational programs and on-site events. John D. Rockefeller Jr. founded Historic Hudson Valley in 1951. Today, the organization serves more than 250,000 guests annually.

The most popular landmark in the Hudson Valley is Kykuit, the six-story home to four generations of the Rockefeller family. This building has been painstakingly maintained for the past 100 years.

Columbia Business School's MBA Program

8/10/2017

In 1986, Arthur (Art) J. Samberg founded Pequot Partners, which grew to be the biggest hedge fund in the world with $17 billion in 2000. He closed the firm in 2009 and founded Hawkes Financial, LLC, a family office in Katonah, New York. Art J. Samberg also contributes to his alma mater, the Columbia Business School, which offers an MBA program with a number of options for focused study.

Columbia’s MBA program is grounded in a set of 10 core courses, most of which students take during their first year. Two of the courses, Financial Accounting and Corporate Finance, are full-term courses, while the remaining courses are half-term courses, including Managerial Statistics, Business Analytics, Strategy Formulation, Managerial Economics, and Global Economic Environment.

Students also choose from a robust offering of electives, which range from Applied Value Investing and Impact Investing to Managerial Negotiations and Healthcare Industry in the 21st Century. The courses are taught by the school’s 150 full-time faculty members and more than 100 adjunct faculty, who are leaders in a diverse array of industries.

Finally, students benefit from the school’s Career Management Center, which helps students as they search for internships and full-time employment. In addition to providing individual sessions with advisors to help students develop job search strategies, the center offers clinics and workshops featuring tactical advice for a successful job search.

Columbia's Arthur J. Samberg Institute for Teaching Excellence

7/31/2017

A graduate of Columbia Business School with a master of business administration, Art J. Samberg founded Pequot Partners in the 1980s and led it to become the world’s largest hedge fund at one point. After closing the firm, he founded Hawkes Financial, LLC, a family office in New York. Also active in charitable giving, Art Samberg has made considerable donations to his alma mater, including a $10 million donation that supported the establishment of the Arthur J. Samberg Institute for Teaching Excellence.

Founded in 2002, the Arthur J. Samberg Institute aims to further Columbia Business School’s dedication to teaching excellence by offering resources and programs to promote curriculum integration, faculty development, and pedagogical innovation. The Institute partners with professional consultants and faculty members to coach professors, lead development workshops, and provide feedback on course content and teaching skills.

Finally, the Institute offers students access to course evaluations for the current year’s electives, as well as an archive of evaluations for courses going back more than 16 years. To learn more about the Institute, visit www8.gsb.columbia.edu/samberg.

College Summit Uses Peer Leadership to Open Doors to Higher Education

7/14/2017

An accomplished investment professional with over four decades of experience, Arthur “Art” Samberg oversees the family office of Hawkes Financial, LLC, in Katonah, New York. Alongside his professional activities, Art J. Samberg dedicates his time and resources to a number of nonprofit groups. Recently, he was recognized by College Summit as a Lifetime Peer Leader.

In its efforts to help young people attain academic and career success, College Summit oversees programs that recruit teams of peer leaders to guide students on their path to college and gainful employment. Through its PeerForward program, the organization partners with high schools across the country to identify and train 11th and 12th graders to be Peer Leaders and PeerForward Advisors.

After they receive training at summer workshops, College Summit’s teams of Peer Leaders and PeerForward Advisors run in-school campaigns to help their classmates get to college. The three campaigns focus on college applications, financial aid, and career exploration.

To help ensure the success of its Peer Leaders teams, College Summit provides several support tools, including materials to raise awareness about each campaign. The organization also maintains LinkForward.org, an online resource that features mobile apps and other tools to help students apply to and pay for college.

How PeerForward Creates a College-Going Culture

6/15/2017

An experienced investment professional, Arthur “Art” J. Samberg reached the peak of his profession through his work with hedge funds, becoming an industry icon in the process. Now managing his family office, Hawkes Financial, LLC, Art Samberg dedicates much of his time to philanthropic activities and is a supporter of PeerForward, a nationwide program that partners with schools to create internal student networks with the aim of encouraging more low-income students to apply to college.

PeerForward provides extensive training to its Peer Leaders, who oversee PeerForward networks, helping them develop the skills required to create college-going cultures within their schools. In addition to operating summer workshops, during which PeerForward trains four high school seniors who go on to train a further four juniors, the organization provides continual coaching services, both on-site and via a range of media such as video conferences and emails.

Further, PeerForward provides training for one professional in each of its schools to offer support to the school’s network, in addition to giving partner schools a range of materials and marketing literature to build awareness of the program and the importance of a college education.

Art Samberg’s Advice to High School and AeroAstro Students

5/27/2017

A longtime financial professional, Arthur “Art” J. Samberg studied aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prior to beginning his career in finance. Despite this change in career focus, Art Samberg maintained his passion for aeronautics and was the subject of an interview published in MIT’s 2015-2016 AeroAstro Annual, during which he discussed his passion for the subject and offered advice to current and prospective students.

In the interview, he spoke about being inspired to enter the aeronautics field due to his father’s work as an electrician, coupled with witnessing the launch of Russia’s Sputnik in 1957. During his time at MIT, he relished in meeting extremely intelligent individuals and developed an interest in control systems. However, by his own admission he was an average student who struggled to gain a real feel for his work, despite having the ability to execute the related math.

He also provided advice to high school and current AeroAstro students, drawing on his previous experience as an MIT educational counselor. In addition to reinforcing the need for strong scientific and mathematical skills, he told students to always follow their passions, regardless of where that may take them.