Raymond Harbert’s lifelong entrepreneurial pursuits began early, at age 15, when he founded Penbryn Hill Catering. Undeterred by his initial lack of a driver’s license, Harbert enlisted other drivers to travel to and from client houses, deliver food, and park guest automobiles at events. This tendency to energetically pursue opportunities, learning as he went, continued throughout his life. For instance, when he initially entered Auburn University as an engineering major, he did not plan to switch to business, pursuing interests in real estate and finance and eventually earning a bachelor’s in industrial management. And when he took his first job after graduation as a computer programmer, he did not anticipate that a few short years later, in 1990, at the tender age of 31, he would be promoted to president and CEO of Harbert Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar diversified conglomerate.
From a young age, Harbert had shown interest in investments and finance. He eagerly followed his father’s (John Harbert, the founder of Harbert Construction Company) investment stories at the dinner table, and once found, as a teenager, his father’s copy of Joseph Wechsberg’s The Merchant Bankers, which led to a fascination with 19th century merchant banks and trading houses: Rothschild, Warburg, Baring, Schroeder, and J.P. Morgan & Company. So after the sale, in 1993, of Harbert Construction Company, the original company started by his father 50 years before, Harbert launched Harbert Management Corporation, the first multi-alternative asset investment management firm in Alabama. The new company would manage all Harbert Corporation’s assets for a percentage fee, and Harbert Corporation, in turn, would provide a $3 million line of credit, secured by any eventual inheritance the younger Harbert might receive.
Naysayers warned that nothing like this had been yet attempted in Alabama, and indeed, that neither Harbert nor his small team had ever managed or worked for an investment firm. Harbert, however, who started as a caterer and then worked as a computer programmer, did not see why he could not be a successful investor, and was willing to bet his inheritance on it. After all, he believed in curiosity, and letting it drive lifelong learning. And possibly more importantly, he believed in persistence, often quoting the Benjamin Franklin proverb that “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” As his business partner Charles D. Miller put it, Harbert “had the courage to make tough decisions and chart a new course which ultimately led to the formation of Harbert Management Corporation.” In the end, despite some difficult years, including the successful weathering of 2008’s Great Recession, Harbert and Ben Franklin proved the naysayers wrong: Today, Harbert Management Corporation oversees ten different investment strategies from eight U.S. and four European offices with over $8 billion of assets under management.
Harbert serves on the boards and executive committees of the Robert Meyer Foundation, Children’s of Alabama, and Birmingham Business Alliance, and is chairman of the Newcomen Society of Alabama. He is also a trustee emeritus of Auburn University, where the college of business is named for him following a transformative gift in 2013. He previously served on the board of the Alabama Trust Fund and is a past member of Leadership Alabama. In 2006, Harbert was awarded the regional Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Financial Services, and he was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2015. Friends describe Harbert as both a fierce negotiator in the boardroom and a committed mentor outside of it, encouraging interns, new employees, and children of friends to “find their passion” as he found his.
Raymond and Kathryn Harbert are active philanthropists, having made significant gifts both in time and capital to numerous organizations including Auburn University, Red Mountain Theatre, Children’s of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and United Way of Central Alabama, where they were awarded the United Way Tocqueville Society Award in 2018.
The Harberts have three children and nine grandchildren and live in Birmingham, Alabama.
