January 2003

Raul Fernandez has imagination and ambition, but he certainly didn’t expect to be sitting on top of a goldmine or to be one of the owners of Washington’s professional hockey and basketball teams before his 40th birthday. Today he faces both the luxury and the challenge of making the next right moves in business, in philanthropy, and as a new father.

For Raul, one of the original founding investors of Venture Philanthropy Partners, 2001 was a very, very good year. That year, Proxicom, the technology services company he founded ten years earlier, was sold to Dimension Data for $450 million. It was the year that he and his wife, Jean Marie, learned that they were expecting their first child (their daughter, Sofia Marie, was born last April. And it was also the year that the social venture fund he and now- Governor Mark Warner of Virginia helped Mario Morino develop became operational as Venture Philanthropy Partners.

Raul’s is a story of a local guy making good. He was born in Washington, DC. His father is a Cuban agronomist who worked for the International Development Bank. His mother is from Ecuador. The family lived in Brazil for a few years and then returned to the Washington area, where Raul and his sister were raised. Raul received a solid Catholic education at St. John’s College High School and went on to earn an economics degree at the University of Maryland. He has a deep appreciation for the cultural richness of this region. He says it offers many of the international and multicultural advantages of bigger cities, “but the smaller size of Washington makes it easier to enjoy—like a boutique restaurant.”

The region has accommodated the seasons of Raul’s growth and exploration. In 1984 his father took him to a fundraiser sponsored by Hispanic Republicans. He met an aide to New York Congressman Jack Kemp and was wooed into politics. Raul worked as a legislative assistant for Kemp until 1988. He then traded politics for business, joining an emerging technology firm. In the 1990s he decided he wanted to be his own boss, so with $40,000 in savings he started Proxicom in 1991.

By the end of the decade, Proxicom was providing e-business solutions to Fortune 500 companies including AOL and Marriott, and had 1400 employees in seven countries. “I was always paranoid that we wouldn’t be able to keep the business growing at an incredibly fast pace,” Raul recalls. “We were good, but we wanted to be great… The paranoia was real helpful, but it burns you out.” The company was so successful that both Compaq and Dimension Data wanted to buy it. “That was very flattering,” Raul says. “When DiData raised their bid 30 percent at the last minute, it was testament to the good value of the people who worked here.”

Raul’s success also captured the attention of the GOP, which invited Raul to make a prime-time television address during the 2000 convention. He shrugs. “I was a minority, in technology, a Republican, and well-off—it’s a small gene pool to pick from. It was a blast!”

Today, as the chairman emeritus of Dimension Data, Raul is contemplating his future. From the incessant ringing of his cell phone, it seems that the world is calling. While he’s deciding his next moves, he’s enjoying having time to spend with his wife and baby daughter and focusing on ways to give back.

He and Jean Marie are particularly interested in supporting quality education programs for children. They are prominent supporters of Washington’s Center City Consortium, an initiative aimed at shoring up Catholic schools in the region by strengthening their back-office operations.

Now Raul is also able to give more time and attention to VPP. His involvement with VPP grew out of a working relationship with Mario Morino, whom he met in 1996. Mario hired Raul’s company to provide the technological platform for the Morino Institute’s Netpreneur online forum, and Proxicom became the anchor tenant in the office building that Mario developed in Reston.

Mario and Raul became fast friends, and Raul was willing to be an early investor in VPP. “I was attracted to VPP because the approach was fresh and new, and I like the exhaustive analytics that Mario has brought to its development,” Raul says. Raul has been a vocal board member and says he is pleased that VPP is finding its rhythm. “I’m looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting personally involved with one of [VPP’s] investment partners in the new year.”