Robert M. Rubin
![Bob Rubin](https://exeter.edu/sites/default/files/styles/standard_inline_image_730_x_auto/public/news/Bob_Rubin_1200.jpg?itok=ZB_DIRNp)
"Exeter really taught me how to think."
Bob Rubin ’69 prides himself on learning things from the ground up. After all, he started trading commodities on Wall Street with a degree in American studies from Yale and no background in economics or finance. Then, after wrapping up a successful 25-year career, he bought 500 sprawling acres of land in Bridgehampton, New York, and founded his own golf club, The Bridge. At the time, Rubin was a recent but enthusiastic convert to the sport. “Once you hit a good shot, you’re hooked,” he says.
A new challenge came Rubin’s way in 2014 when he was asked if he’d be interested in launching a golf-based youth development organization in New York City. The idea: introduce young men of color to the sport and provide mentoring and tutoring programs as a way of opening up more academic and professional opportunities to them in the future.
Rubin was receptive to the idea, as he was well aware of the role education and privilege had played in his own life. After growing up in a working-class family in New Jersey, he attended Exeter on financial aid and graduated a year early, when he was only 15. “I was from a blue-collar background, and I went to these prep schools, Ivy League schools and Wall Street,” he says. “That access is not readily available to persons of color. Economic mobility in America is narrowing, not getting better.”
The result was the Bridge Golf Foundation and the Bridge Golf Learning Center, which opened in Harlem in 2016. Though Rubin started out in more hands-off roles as the organization’s main financial backer and real estate provider, he now serves as co-executive director along with his wife, Stéphane Samuel.
For three hours after school each weekday, around 50 students in grades nine through 12 come to the center for tutoring and mentoring programs as well as coaching in golf. The center boasts state-of-the-art golf simulators in three hitting bays, and a putt analysis and training system, and is open to the public when students aren’t in session. The foundation partners with underfunded, under-resourced public schools, and works closely with the school’s teachers and guidance counselors to identify students and provide the best support for each individual in the program. “Our partners like us because we’re not just looking for their highest-performing kids,” Rubin says. “We’re focused on the lost middle, the kids who are not good enough — or bad enough — to get noticed.”
Editor's note: This feature first appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.