Speakers
Charles G. Koch
Chairman and CEO, Koch Industries
Charles G. Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, a position he has held since 1967. Under his leadership, the company has grown 2,800-fold, a rate of return 16 times higher than the S&P 500. Mr. Koch instilled a corporate ethic of hard work, integrity, humility, and a lifelong dedication to learning. As a result, Koch Industries today has annual revenues over $100 billion and employs 67,000 people in 60 countries around the globe. With business, the great passion of Mr. Koch’s life has been identifying and understanding the principles that lead to prosperity and social progress. As an MIT-trained engineer, he understood the physical world to operate according to fixed, natural laws. Through his study of history, economics, and philosophy, he discovered a set of similar laws governing societal wellbeing. He then applied those laws to his business, developing Market-Based Management, a set of principles that guides the investment of his time and resources. Those principles likewise guide his philanthropy. Mr. Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977, and has been a generous supporter of many other libertarian and free-market organizations, including the Institute for Humane Studies, the Bill of Rights Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has funded more than 180 programs that teach how free societies advance the cause of global peace and prosperity. Mr. Koch has provided critical, early career support for several economists whose work would in time win the Nobel Prize; he also backs programs that teach at-risk young people how to start and run businesses. He has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Mr. Koch received a bachelor’s degree in general engineering and master’s degrees in nuclear and chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
