Livestream: Lessons in leadership from investor David Booth

September 17 | 6-7 pm CST

Register for livestream

Join The Holdsworth Center for a Place the Ladder conversation with David Booth, an investment manager at the center of a monumental transformation in personal finance and author of the forthcoming book Stay Calm: Learn to Embrace Uncertainty in Investing and Life (Out Sept. 1).

In partnership with the Texas Book Festival, the conversation will be moderated by Robert Kaplan, Holdsworth board member and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Ticket includes a copy of Stay Calm.

The founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, Booth didn’t just witness the financial revolution: He helped lead it. For five decades, he bridged academic theory and real-world investing, collaborating with Nobel laureates along the way. He’s also an avid art collector, a committed philanthropist and The Holdsworth Center’s neighbor on the shores of Lake Austin.

At Place the Ladder, Booth will open up about his leadership journey from a shoe salesman in Lawrence, Kansas to building a firm entrusted with managing $1 trillion in global assets. He’ll also share the lessons, mindsets and stories behind the personal finance revolution outlined in Stay Calm, and show listeners how to apply those lessons in their own lives.

About the Speaker

David Booth grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, sold shoes as a teenager, and went on to reshape how the world invests. As co-founder and chairman of Dimensional Fund Advisors, he spent five decades turning academic research into practical investment strategies, collaborating with Nobel laureates and challenging an industry that had no interest in being challenged. Today, Dimensional manages more than $1 trillion in assets. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business bears his name, the result of a transformative gift he made in 2008 to the institution he credits with setting him on his path.

What built that track record wasn’t prediction. It was the discipline to resist it and the conviction to hold the line when markets, headlines, and conventional wisdom all said otherwise. His new book, Stay Calm, distills those lessons into a philosophy for leaders in any field: how to make sound decisions with incomplete information, think in decades when everyone around you is thinking in quarters and find steadiness when the pressure to react is loudest.

Beyond finance, Booth is an avid art collector and committed philanthropist. He sits on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, where the David Booth Conservation Center bears his name, and has supported arts and education institutions across the country.