Bernard Marcus
Atlanta, Georgia
Bachelor of Arts/Science, Rutgers University
United States
Home Depot
10
Home Depot, Self Made
$6,000,000,000
337
5
#337 Billionaires 2019
#109 Forbes 400 2018
Bernard Marcus was fired from hardware store Handy Dan in 1978, along with his coworker Arthur Blank, so the duo started a rival retailer, Home Depot.In 1981, Marcus, Blank and early investor Kenneth Langone took Home Depot public. All three men are now billionaires.Marcus was born to Russian immigrant parents, who sought the "golden land" in the U.S. and ended up in a fourth floor walk-up tenement in N.J.He has given away more than $1 billion to education, hospitals and Jewish causes through the Marcus Foundation, which he founded with his wife.Marcus helped to open the Georgia Aquarium, now home to a diverse marine life collection including beluga whales and whale sharks, in November 2005.
In the early days of Home Depot no one came into the store, so Marcus and Blank sent their kids out into the streets to hand $1 bills to anyone willing to walk in.Initially Marcus wanted to be a doctor but couldn't afford Harvard Medical School, so he instead studied pharmaceuticals at Rutgers in his native N.J.
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