Robert Agostinelli

Chairman, Rhône Group

Rochester, NY native Robert Agostinelli, aged 69, attended the Aquinas Institute and served as an altar boy at Sacred Heart Cathedral with Bishop Fulton J Sheen. He earned his MBA at Columbia University. Joining Goldman Sachs in 1982, he left for Lazard’s in 1987. Agostinelli struck out on his own in 1995 with the founding of New York-based private equity shop Rhône Group. He is active in philanthropic activities, including being a former chairman of the National Review Institute who set up the William F Buckley prize for leadership in political thought and as a member of the Reagan Ranch board of governors. In a caustic and widely applauded 2021 article in the National Review, Agostinelli spoke out about the crisis of Catholic identity on American campuses today after a return visit to Aquinas where he found the school indoctrinated with woke values that represented a form of “papier-mâché Catholicism”. He lamented how far removed the school was from the Judeo-Christian values that had provided him with a “moral compass” for life.