Barney Rush

— 25th — (1999) Bill Clinton

TWENTY-FIVE years after graduation, I have a career and life I hadn't imagined in college. I'm very happily married to Marjorie Shaw (also class of '74), and a proud and happy dad of Alison, ten going on thirteen, and Carolyn, seven. Marjorie and I lived in New York for ten years, where I worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, before the desire to raise kids outside New York, and a head-hunter's call, took us to West Palm Beach, Florida. There we spent the first six years of the nineties, not playing golf and not boating, and hopefully not frying too many brain cells. However, we found a comfortable and safe neighborhood in which it was easy to raise young children. (I've mused that those of us who spent the sixties and seventies escaping the fifties, yearn in the nineties to give our children the simplicity and sense of security that we had forty years before.) My job took me around the country and frequently to Asia, where I worked to develop and finance electric power plants. Three years ago, upon returning from a lengthy trip to the Philippines, I realized I'd had enough of such long absences from my family.

By good fortune, we were able to move to London. This is a life we love: living in a city that offers a combination of civility and endless fascination; exploring castles and countryside on weekends, and traveling through Europe with our family. I even walk to work through Hyde Park. I am responsible for European business development for Southern Energy, Inc., the affiliate of a large U.S. electric utility that develops power plants and manages utilities internationally. I was responsible for Southern's acquisition last year of a leading interest in the electric utility that serves Berlin and now serve as chairman of the supervisory board of this company. As an American living in England and traveling frequently to Germany, I find that a brief stint in the State Department years ago has turned out to be as valuable as any background in business or finance. The job is fascinating but hectic and challenging. My life offers little time for hobbies. When I'm not working, I'm with the family; but I have no desire to be anywhere else.

— 40th — (2014) Barack Obama

I've continued to enjoy a full and varied life, and I'm now trying to navigate along the ramp from full-time to part-time work, and someday to retirement. The foundation of my good fortune remains my marriage to Marjorie Shaw '74. We celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary two years ago — not with a big party, but just a weekend with three other couples who've been close friends of ours for decades. (Old friends are the best, aren't they?) Marjorie had just recovered from her second bout with cancer — Hodgkin's lymphoma this time — so indeed, we had a lot to be thankful for.

Our two daughters are doing well: the oldest, Alison, has come out with her first CD, a ballad and rock compilation of her own songs, called Rarest Bird (on iTunes and Spotify). She'll begin a specialized master's program at Stanford in the fall, in music and technology, and she is getting married this summer. Our younger daughter, Carolyn, is a junior at Ithaca College and appears to have finally discovered that learning can be enjoyable, even exciting.

As for me: I've had several career changes over the past five years and have so far managed to keep my head bobbing above water. In 2009, we sold the start-up company that I had run for over six years. H2Gen Innovations, which developed and manufactured skid-mounted hydrogen generation plants, was quite the roller coaster — a very exciting but exhausting endeavor. After a few months off, I began working for a private equity firm, Denham Capital, and became an operating partner in the fall of 2010. I loved the work of delving into small companies and working with management to solve problems, some of which could be fixed, and, alas, some of which couldn't be. I found that my advice was well listened to when I'd start my comment with the preamble, "Well, if you'd like to avoid a mistake that I made…" My work with Denham began to wind down last year, as Denham exited from the portfolio companies that I'd been involved with.

Now that my hair finally has some gray in it (query: does one have to have gray hair to become an eminence grise?), I've been elected to the board of the Independent System Operator, New England. The ISO NE oversees the wholesale electric markets for New England, dispatches the power plants generation systems, and has ultimate responsibility for keeping the lights on. Working with this high-quality organization brings me back to the industry which was at the core of my professional life, but from the perspective of public policy, which I enjoy very much. While this board seat is a very active one, I have considerable time for other activities and am currently consulting with another private equity firm. So some days are very busy, and that feels great; some days I have leisure, and that feels great; and some days I have leisure, and wish I were more in the arena. And so I feel my way through a period of transition.

Overall, I'd like to slow the ramp towards retirement, at least for the next three years or so, especially as Marjorie is working very full-time as an assistant professor at Howard Medical School. But when we do retire, more travel and relaxation beckons, and — who knows? — playgrounds with grandkids?

— 50th — (2024) Joseph Biden

First the important parts: I’ve been married to a wonderful woman, Marjorie Shaw, since 1982. Marjorie, also class of ’74, and I met at Jill Einstein’s wedding in 1980. Jill, ever so thoughtful, had told me about Marjorie, but had not told Marjorie about me – perhaps arising from the detail that Marjorie was engaged to someone else at the time. Jill’s wisdom has endured. For our Jordan J website, I submitted a number of pictures of Jill and Marjorie, including one from our wedding day, for which Jill was Matron of Honor. Marjorie, who went on from Harvard to earn a PhD in neuroanatomy from Case Western, retired two years ago from her position teaching gross anatomy at Howard University Medical School. We’ve lived in Chevy Chase, MD, since 2003.

We have two daughters: Alison, 34, and Carolyn, 31. Alison lives in Saratoga California with her husband Jordan. Minimalist Millennials, they live in a full-size bus that has been converted into a home. Alison has worked as a computational linguist for a robotics company – teaching English to a machine - but the division she worked for closed, coincidentally, at the outset of the pandemic. She has worked since then but struggles finding something she really wants to do. She’s very artistic - produced her own CD nine years ago, called “Rarest Bird,” available still on Spotify. She now does aerial silk dancing.

Carolyn lives near us, in Rockville, with her beau, Brad, two cats and a dog. True to her love for animals, Carolyn works for a dog walking and pet care service. Marjorie and I had to rescue her in the summer of 2016 from growing addictions. But she – and Brad, also in recovery - have rebuilt their lives, clean and sober. We’re immensely proud of them and their achievement.

Both girls found their birth parents over the past several years and this has turned out to be a wonderful journey for all of us. They have met sisters and brothers, and Marjorie and I have met and enjoyed “bio parents” and grandparents. However, tragically, Carolyn’s birthmother died of an overdose of fentanyl shortly after Carolyn connected with her. Carolyn remains grateful that they met.

As to my life: I’m now sliding into retirement from a career that has taken me to positions I would never have conceived of when at Jordan J. I’m currently on the board of directors of the ISO New England, a public authority that oversees the electric grid for the New England states. It’s the ISO’s job to integrate renewables and maintain reliability - a challenging task! And until this past September, I was chair of the board of Azure Power, a leading developer of solar energy projects in India. I’ve also been on the Town Council of the Town of Chevy Chase for the past 6 years and am currently the Mayor. My main goal: converting two surface parking lots to 2 and ½ acres of new urban parks in Bethesda, adjacent to our Town. I continue to play alto saxophone – with the Rockville Concert Band.

As to what I’ve done in the past: I recently gave a lecture in a course taught by a friend of mine at Emory business school. My friend asked me to say something about my background, noting that the students liked to know what the guest lecturer has done. I thought about how to capture the trajectory of my career, and so put up two pictures: one of a pinball machine; the next of a roller coaster – with the caption stating that I hope I’ve had enough “ups” to remain optimistic, and enough “downs” to have gained some wisdom.

Forward, from graduation in ’74: I worked for the re-election of a Democratic congressman from Michigan and then in his Washington office; as a research assistant at the World Bank, assessing and financing low-cost housing in Central America and Africa; then went to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (used to be the Woodrow Wilson School) for a masters; then joined the State Department as an assistant to the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs in the Carter administration; then to Lehman Brothers, where I first worked on teams advising developing nations to reschedule the debts, and then on financing geothermal and hydroelectric power projects. I left Lehman in 1990 to join a small company, Oxbow Power, so that I could directly develop these sorts of projects. This post took us to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where we stayed for six years. (Many years too long, in Marjorie’s view!).

In 1996, I joined an affiliate of a large US utility, Southern Company, to find investment opportunities in Europe, and we lived in London for four years and then in Amsterdam for two more. Living in Europe was heaven. I ultimately headed up European operations for our company, split from its parent and renamed Mirant, and became the Chair of the board of Bewag, the electric utility serving Berlin. (We had purchased a large block of shares in the company.) I traveled to Berlin frequently. Overseeing a board of twenty, ten of whom were worker representatives, in a city that had just been reunited a decade before was fascinating.

Then the roller coaster set in: We sold our stake in Bewag in 2002, and with Mirant’s stock imploding after the Enron collapse (We had none of the skullduggery, but a similar business model of owning power plants and trading electricity), I was let go and spent the last 6 months taking apart what I had worked 6 years to build. We returned to the US in the summer of 2002, renting a home in Bethesda, MD. I was unemployed for most of a year – a time for a lot of reflection and discovery - before being asked to be CEO of a start-up company making hydrogen generation equipment. Leading a scrappy, smart group of engineers and fabricators for the next 6 and a half years was the most challenging and exciting job I’ve ever held. Then another down in 2008, with some technical problems and the world financial crisis. We sold the company in 2009, and I began a 4-year stint with a private equity firm, overseeing some of their portfolio companies. As that wound down in 2013, my board work commenced: first with the ISO New England, in 2013, and then with Azure, in 2017. My career in a nutshell: pinball and roller coasters.

I look forward very much to seeing everyone!

Warm regards to all,

Barney