Robert S. Harrison

Robert S. Harrison is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University. He served as the chief executive officer of the Clinton Global Initiative from 2007 to 2016 and was the first executive director of the Clinton Foundation’s childhood obesity initiative from 2005 to 2007. Before joining the Clinton Foundation, he was an investment banker and attorney for 22 years. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1987, where he became a partner in the firm’s investment banking division and global co-head of its Communications, Media, and Entertainment group until 2003. From 1981 to 1987, Harrison practiced corporate law in the New York and Paris offices of Davis, Polk, and Wardwell. Harrison serves as an overseer of Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech, a director of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, chairman emeritus of the Henry Street Settlement Board of Directors, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell University; a master’s degree in politics, philosophy, and economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a J.D. from Yale Law School.