Craig Newmark

The Craigslist founder has been on a giving spree in recent years, with a significant portion of his grant making going to journalism. Through his Craig Newmark Philanthropies, an umbrella group for his foundations, he gave $20 million last year to create the Markup, a nonprofit news organization that aims to investigate the societal impact of new technologies. He contributed another $20 million to endow City University of New York’s newly named Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, among other journalism grants. He also regularly backs groups that help veterans and their families, efforts to increase the number of women in technology fields, and voter-protection programs. He was born on December 6th of 1952 in Morristown, New Jersey. When he was 13, his father passed away after a long cancer fight. His family then relocated to Jacob Ford Village, where he graduated from high school with honors. Then, Craig Newmark attended Case Western Reserve University, were he graduated with a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science. After his graduation, he got a job at IBM, where he remained for 17 years. He also spent some time employed with Bank of America and Sun Microsystems. In 1993, he decided to move to San Francisco. Along Charles Schwab, he launched Craigslist to the internet, but merely as a newsletter/e-mail list where he informed his friends about upcoming events. Due to the success of the idea, in 1996 he switched the site to a web-based directory, and three years later, Newmark quit his job to entirely focus to Craigslist as an online marketplace... and the rest is history. By 2020, Craig Newmark's net worth was $1.3 billion according to Forbes. By 2023, it's presumed that his fortune is $800 million.