Bobby Sager
n any given day you might find Bobby Sager living in a tent in Karachi, sharing a toilet with 40 monks in the Himalayas, working alongside President Kagame in Rwanda, or discussing science education with the Dalai Lama. In 2000, the 57 year-old self made multimillionaire entrepreneur quit his high powered position leading Gordon Brothers Group, pulled his children out of school and created the Sager Family Traveling Foundation, a non profit organization that focuses on sustainable philanthropic work. The family spends up to 10 months of the year in the some of the world’s most remote, forgotten and war-torn places working “eyeball-to-eyeball” with the poorest and most devastated
people. In the last ten years they have lived in Rwanda, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Syria and Zimbabwe. Is he crazy? No. Just on a mission to get the most out of life. Sager explains he only wanted to make money so that he could have choices in life and then use those choices to experience the fullest existence possible. It
jump in. We will eat food, sleep there on the ground or whatever – because you are not there to observe, you are there to be a part of it,” explains Sager. This hands on approach has earned Sager the respect of the communities he works in. The game changer “Hope isn’t just nice, it’s a game
was his selfish desire to live life to the fullest, rather than altruism, that led him to take this path.
Sager with Lady Gaga
Personal return on investment Sager is practical about what his philanthropic work, applying his deal making abilities from the financial sector to the non-profit world. He says that the impact of incremental wealth is now quite marginal in his life. However his philanthropic ventures with the same effort provide quantum impact and exponential personal ROI (Return on Investment). In the most difficult places in the world, a small investment of time and money goes a long way. Wherever the Sager Family Traveling Foundation goes, “we live as close to the ground as possible. Our way of travelling has always been to
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changer,” says Sager. In one of his most far reaching projects, the innovator and businessman created the idea of an indestructible football as a way to bring hope and teach life lessons to children recovering from war. The idea was inspired by Moise, a Rwandan child soldier who had killed 3 people by the time he was 9 that Sager and his son met while staying in a rehabilitation camp for former child soldiers. Moise’s most prized possession was a simple football he had created by tying together old trash bags with string. Sager thought he could provide kids like Moise with something more permanent to play with than a tattered old ball made of garbage. While a ball may seem a small thing to most, an indestructible football can mean so much more to a child living
All photos courtesy of Team Sager
Rock star Sting, a good friend and ardent supporter of Sager’s work describes him as “a big brash guy from Boston…flamboyant, eccentric, inexhaustible world traveler and practical philanthropist.”