Father knows best? Not always. When Raymond Harbert ’82 arrived at Auburn in the fall of 1976, he seemed destined to follow in the footsteps of his father, John M. Harbert III, the Birmingham construction magnate and a 1946 AU engineering graduate. It was all mapped out. Like his father, Raymond would study engineering. Then he’d join the the family’s successful construction firm. But the plan had one major flaw, at least from Raymond’s point of view: he didn’t like engineering. He wanted to study finance. Raymond needed time to find his own path. He eventually transferred to the College of Business, where he majored in industrial management. It took him six years to earn that degree, during which time he took courses in finance and statistics, providing him with a solid foundation for analytical thinking in the business world. “I had several junior years,” laughs Harbert, 55, from his Birmingham office. “College is a time when you are making decisions. You have to learn to think for yourself, as opposed to being told what to do.” His extended stay at Auburn also provided also provided time for the courtship of his initially reluctant wifeto-be, Kathryn Dunn ’81. He met her at a fraternity party on campus, was smitten, and suggested to one of her Phi Mu sorority sisters that she
set them up on a blind date. He invited her to a party at his college apartment to watch the Academy Awards. Raymond Harbert might have been smitten, but Kathryn Dunn wasn’t. “I asked her to go to every football game the next fall,” he says. “She wouldn’t go with me.” He persevered. Much as with his academic career, he refused to give up or settle. Months after his initial attempts, the couple finally started dating and he won her over. They were married in October 1982. “I was very persistent,” he says. Auburn business degree in hand, Harbert went to work for his father at Harbert Corp., the thriving construction company with several subsidiaries and investment arms. He started in the construction business and was soon running Harbert’s commercial real estate development division. “Working for my father, I was exposed to many business situations,” he says. “Today, I feel like a self-taught MBA.” By age 28, he’d found his stride, heading up Harbert’s investment operation. Three years later, he became Harbert’s president and CEO at a time when the construction company was struggling during the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1992, he managed to convince his father it was time to sell, and the next year he
and four Harbert executives launched an investment company called Harbert Management Corp. The group included Charlie Miller ’80, Harbert’s Kappa Alpha fraternity brother who now serves as the corporation’s executive vice president and global head of distribution. Today, Harbert Management Corp., with about 300 employees, has $3.5 billion under management around the globe, with offices in Australia, Hong Kong, London, Paris and Madrid. Their clients range from high-networth individuals to large in-
stitutions, the largest of which in 2013 is CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a provider of retirement, health and financial programs. If persistence got him through Auburn and perseverance helped him win over the love of his life, it’s performance to which Harbert credits business success. “Wealth management is a fantastic industry,” he says. “You can be very successful, but it’s also very Darwinian. If you don’t post results, you go out of business.”—David McKay Wilson
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