Stephen Robert

In February 2022, it was reported that President Joe Biden would nominate Robert as the United States Ambassador to Italy. As of June 2022, a formal announcement has not been made.

In May 2019, New York-Presbyterian Hospital launched the Pilar Crespi Robert and Stephen Robert Center for Community Health Navigation. The program "supports and empowers vulnerable families by helping them receive appropriate, continuous care and access services that address social barriers to care, such as food insecurity, domestic violence, immigration challenges, and substandard housing."

In October 2019, Stephen Robert and Pilar Crespi Robert received the Tzedek v’Shalom Award for their work with justice and peace at the 2019 J Street National Gala.

Robert is also chairman of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown. In 2015 he was one of a consortium of three donors who jointly donated $50 million to the institute, to fund construction of a new building, expansion of the institute's faculty, and expansion and creation of initiatives aimed at addressing some of the world's most difficult policy challenges. In May 2019, Brown University named the new building the Stephen Robert Hall in his honor.

In the 2010s, he has published several articles critical of Israel's policies on Palestine, in venues including The Nation, Haaretz, and the New York Times. He has also spoken at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, with the same critiques. From his standpoint as a Jew, a supporter of Israel, a benefactor and director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a director of the U.S./Middle East Project, and a governor of the American Jewish Committee, he has maintained that Israel is an apartheid state. Citing the UN's specific definition of apartheid – a system where "one institutionalized racial group deprives another racial group of their rights" – he has pointed out, among other deprivations, Palestinians' inability to receive secondary and tertiary medical care; their lack of freedom of movement; restrictions on trade, water, and farming; and the arbitrary arrest they are subject to. He believes that Israel needs a Palestinian state in order to remain a democratic Jewish state. His 2018 opinion piece in Haaretz noted Israel's turn towards right-wing extremism and Donald Trump's complicity in that.

In 2007 the Brown faculty bestowed on him its highest honor, the Susan Colver Rosenberger Medal for "specially notable or beneficial achievement". The chair of the faculty executive committee stated, "The Brown faculty is proud to honor the leadership of Stephen Robert. His stewardship has led this university through the many extraordinary accomplishments in pursuit of the Plan for Academic Enrichment, including its emphasis on recruiting the best minds, and recruiting the best scholars."

In 2007 he also provided the lead gift, along with three anonymous donors, for a $20-million renovation of Faunce House, a historic building on campus, in order to create a space for the entire Brown community to gather. In the fall of 2010 the newly renovated building was renamed the Stephen Robert Campus Center, in honor of his leadership and achievements. Robert's intention for the extensive renovation was to foster greater interaction among Brown's students, faculty, and staff, and to achieve academic enrichment by building a shared sense of community.

From 2005 to 2009, he was Chairman and CEO of Renaissance Institutional Management, an investment firm that advises high net-worth and institutional investment clients, which is a subsidiary of Renaissance Technologies. He retired in 2009 to focus on philanthropic work.

In 2004, Brown University bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

As Chancellor, he co-launched the Stephen Robert Initiative for the Study of Values, a multi-pronged and ongoing campus initiative to study moral and ethical values and integrate the study of human values into the college curriculum. He also guided the university through the sudden resignation of its president, E. Gordon Gee, and chaired the 2000 presidential selection committee that named Ruth J. Simmons as Gee's successor. In 2004 he donated $500,000 to create and endow the Chancellor Stephen Robert Fellowship, a fellowship for graduate students in any discipline.

Robert was Chancellor of Brown University from 1998 to 2007, having previously been on the university's board of trustees from 1984–1994 and on its board of fellows since 1994. He had also been on numerous committees at the university, including the committee on investment, which he chaired from 1986 to 1997.

He became Oppenheimer's Chairman and CEO in 1983. In 1986, Robert and Nathan Gantcher, Oppenheimer's president, led a management group that purchased an 82% interest in the company from its parent Mercantile House Holdings. The buyout returned Oppenheimer to private ownership, and Robert became the company's principal owner. In 1997 he and Gantcher sold Oppenheimer to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), and Robert resigned from the firm.

In 1968 he began working at the investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. as a portfolio manager, later becoming chief investment officer. He became head of research in 1976. In 1979 he was appointed President, and was groomed for the position of Chairman and CEO, since the company's longterm head, Jack Nash, wished to eventually retire. During Robert's presidency, in 1982 Oppenheimer was acquired by Mercantile House Holdings in London, and Robert joined the Mercantile House board of directors.

Robert began his career in 1965 on Wall Street, as a securities analyst at the investment firm of Faulkner, Dawkins & Sullivan.

He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he graduated in 1958. He received a BA in political science from Brown University in 1962. He did post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics (1962–1963) and Columbia Business School (1963–1965).

Stephen Robert (born June 13, 1940) is an American financial business executive, academic administrator, and philanthropist. He was Chairman and CEO of Oppenheimer & Co. from 1983 to 1997, and Chancellor of Brown University from 1998 to 2007. As a philanthropist he heads his Source of Hope Foundation, which provides basic services to communities in great need around the world. As a journalist, he has published articles on Israeli–Palestinian relations, and on the U.S. economy, in major national and international publications.

Stephen Robert was born in 1940 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He has stated, "I grew up in a typically Jewish family in New England [...] My father was president of the local synagogue; my mother was president of the local Hadassah."