Bruce A. Karsh

Mr. Bruce A. Karsh

Bruce A. Karsh is co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a global alternative investment company with $170 billion of assets under management. He is also chief investment officer and serves as portfolio manager for Oaktree’s flagship opportunities funds and its multi-strategy credit funds. Bruce Karsh holds an A.B. in economics from Duke University (1977), and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law (1980). Now a trustee emeritus of Duke University, Mr. Karsh served as trustee from 2003 to 2015, and as chairman of the board of DUMAC from 2005 to 2014. 

Bruce Karsh and Martha L. Karsh, his wife of 43 years, founded the Karsh Family Foundation in 1998 which supports education, democracy, and community. Through the foundation, the Karshes have granted over $400 million for education, professorships and scholarships, principally for undergraduate financial aid. At Duke University, the undergraduate financial aid department is named after the Karshes. The Karshes have established major scholarship programs at Duke, the University of Virginia Law School, the University of Pennsylvania, Howard University, Spelman College, and Brown University. Two of them are top merit scholarship programs: the Karsh STEM Scholars Program at Howard University and the Karsh-Dillard Scholarships at Virginia Law School. 

In 2022, Howard University also announced a $10 million gift from the Karsh Family Foundation to support the Graduation Retention Access to Continued Excellence (GRACE) grant. In 2021, the Karshes founded the Institute of Democracy at UVA. Martha and Bruce Karsh are major supporters of KIPP, Teach for America, Charter School Growth Fund, and UNCF.