Mitchell Rales
| Mitchell Rales | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1956 (age 60–61) |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | B.A. Miami University |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | co-founder of conglomerate Danaher Corporation |
| Net worth |
 US$ 4.0 billion (July 2014) |
| Spouse(s) | Lyn Rales (divorced) Emily Wei (current) |
| Children | 2 with Lyn Rales |
| Parent(s) | Ruth and Norman Rales |
| Family | Steven M. Rales (brother) |
Mitchell Rales (born 1956 (age 60–61)) is an American businessman and a collector of modern and contemporary art. He has been a director of Danaher Corporation since 1983. In collaboration with his wife Emily Wei Rales, an art historian and curator, he has established Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Maryland, which presents exhibitions of their collection of modern and contemporary art and installations of outdoor sculpture.
Raised in a Jewish family, Mitchell is one of four sons of Norman and Ruth Rales. His father was raised in an orphanage, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City and later became a very successful businessman who sold his building supply company in Washington, D.C. to his employees in what was the first (ESOP) transaction in the U.S. His father was also a philanthropist founding the Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation and the Ruth Rales Jewish Family Service. Mitchell has three brothers: Joshua, Steven, and Stewart.
Mitchell grew up in Bethesda, Maryland and graduated from Walt Whitman High School in 1974. He earned a degree in business administration at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1978 and was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
In 1979, he left his father's real estate firm to found Equity Group Holdings, with his brother Steven M. Rales. Using junk bonds, they bought a diversified line of businesses. They changed the name to Diversified Mortgage Investors, in 1978, and then Danaher, in 1984.
In the 1980s, the AM side of WGMS was sold off to Washington, D.C., venture capitalists Steven and Mitchell Rales, who converted the music station into the first frequency for WTEM, a sports-talk station, in 1992. In 1988, he made a hostile takeover bid for Interco, Inc, which was, at the time, the nation's largest manufacturer of furniture and men's shoes (owning both Converse shoes and the Ethan Allen furniture). He later ended the bid after five months with a profit of $60 million.
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