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Morehouse College held its 139th commencement exercises May 21, four years after billionaire Robert Smith surprised the 2019 graduating class with a $34 million pledge to pay off their student loan debt.
Atlanta Business Chronicle checked in with Smith and a couple of Morehouse alumni to see the impact the historic donation has made.
As Smith sees it, the gift “liberated their spirits,” allowing those 400 Morehouse graduates to become their best selves.
“You can see [the men] now lean into things like graduate school and buying houses, making investments and turning towards their community,” said Smith, founder of Vista Equity Partners. He told the Chronicle instead of spending years paying back loans, the graduates are free to focus on using the gift to pay it forward.
Aaron Mitchom, who earned a finance degree from Morehouse and had $200,000 in student loan debt, said, “I realized the gift that Robert Smith gave me wasn’t just for me to be debt free, but to start a business to affect the community.”
Last year, Mitchom traded his banking career in New York City for a chance to start a technology firm. He said his financial freedom “allowed me to take that risk at this time in my life.”
Now, Mitchom is raising funds for Freedom, the name of his new startup, which he said aims to “democratize the predatory bail bonds industry.”
Freedom will leverage artificial intelligence to make personal loans to families who want to get their loved ones out of jail, Mitchom told the Chronicle. The startup is looking to raise a $1 million funding round.
Ernest Holmes, another 2019 Morehouse graduate, is a Google software engineer who works as a technical program manager on the company’s education equity team.
“I think about ways to make sure that I’m opening the doors, creating opportunities for people who are younger than I am," Holmes said.
Holmes is co-founder of Code House, a nonprofit organization that connects ethnically diverse youth to the technology sector. In 2020, Code House launched its Scholars Initiative, which provides rising freshman with an interest in science at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) a $20,000 scholarship.
The initiative also offers them a four-week bridge program between high school graduation and college and pairs them with two mentors. There are 72 student recipients spread across the Atlanta University Center, Howard University and North Carolina A&T. The Code House Scholars Initiative has raised $3.4 million. Supporters include Google, PayPal and Adobe.
Smith said the impact of his donation is greater than he expected.
“A big part of the gift wasn’t the money, believe it or not,” he said. “It was the opportunity to also give that class a chance to bond and come together.”
Smith received an honorary doctor of humane letters from Morehouse in 2019. Smith said he and his “classmates” meet the last Thursday of every month for a video chat that includes guest speakers on topics such as entrepreneurship and finance.
Total enrollment in business school
| Rank | Prior Rank | School |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Terry College of Business at <br>The University of Georgia |
2 | 2 | Michael J. Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University |
3 | 3 | J. Mack Robinson College of Business, <br>Georgia State University |
