Bobby Sager

Robert "Bobby" Sager is an American philanthropist and photographer, best known for founding the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow, a charitable organization. Sager also was a partner and the president of Gordon Brothers Group from 1985 to 2000.

Sager was raised in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His father owned a small jewelry business, while his mother was a homemaker who sometimes worked as a small-time activist for local African American couples having issues renting apartments. Mrs. Sager would rent the apartments on behalf of the couples and later take the landlords to court.

Despite aspiring to become an actor, Sager pursued business, graduating from Brandeis University in 1976 with a degree in economics, then going on to obtain a Masters of Management from Yale University.

In 1985, Sager joined Gordon Brothers Group as a partner and served as their President. Between 1985 and his departure from Gordon Brothers in 2000, Sager helped the company grow from a $10 million a year business to a multi-billion business with 20 offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. Sager still serves on the board of advisors for Gordon Brothers.

He's also a member of the Young Presidents' Organization. In 2013, Sager was awarded the YPO Hickok Award, its highest honor for a member. In 2002, he was awarded the YPO Global Humanitarian Award.

In 1999, Sager met the musician and activist Sting at a bar in Brazil. Sager was looking for a tour of the interior of the rain forest and asked Sting for contacts. The two kept in touch after that point. In the words of Sting, Bobby's frequent travelmate, Bobby is "a big brash guy from Boston...an old Nepal hand, flamboyant eccentric, inexhaustible world traveler, and practical philanthropist."

In 2000, Sager resigned his position at Gordon Brothers and founded the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow, a charitable organization. He, along with his wife Elaine, daughter Tess, and son Shane, packed up their things and ventured out into some of the most dangerous places on the planet to make a difference. Through the foundation, Sager and his family live in villages and cities in developing countries using hands-on perspective and eyeball to eyeball connection to conceive, develop and operate economic opportunity training and leadership programs. These programs include Teacher Training, Leadership Training, Micro Enterprise, and Peace and Reconciliation Efforts. On any given day you might find 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 India. He would later tell The Chronicle of Philanthropy, "It wasn't like I had this moment of awareness or I said, I've been fortunate and now I want to give back. It was about me in my quest for fullness in my life, looking at my situation and saying, more money isn't going to give me more return on investment because I already have all that I want that money can buy."

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