(JTA) — Before October 7, 2023, Marc Rowan was known more for his Wall Street acumen than for his political activism.
But over the past year, the billionaire investor has become one of the most prominent voices in a donor revolt born of dissatisfaction with how elite universities have responded to campus antisemitism.
And now, Rowan may be taking that activist streak to the White House. He is reportedly on President-elect Donald Trump's shortlist for treasury secretary, a position that would allow him to bring his financial experience and pro-Israel leanings to the highest levels of government.
Trump thinks Rowan – whose Apollo Global Management manages around $733 billion in assets, including a significant amount on behalf of Saudi Arabian investors – is impressive and is expected to invite Rowan to Mar-a-Lago this week for an interview, The New York Times reported. Rowan has not yet been in touch with Trump directly but has told Trump's aides that he is interested in the role, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
If he is chosen, Rowan will have won the job over another billionaire Jewish Trump supporter, Howard Lutnick, who is co-chairing the incoming president's transition team.
Rowan grew up in a Jewish family on Long Island, the grandson of a New York University economics professor named Emanuel Stein, who was known for quoting the Talmud, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Drawing broader attention
He co-founded Apollo in 1990 and has become a fixture on Wall Street. He is personally worth more than $6 billion, according to Forbes. Fortune magazine named him as one of the "100 most powerful people in business” this year.
He drew broader attention after October 7, when he lambasted the way his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, was responding to Hamas' attack.
"Microaggressions are condemned with extreme moral outrage, and yet violence, particularly violence against Jews, antisemitism, seems to have found a place of tolerance on the campus,” Rowan told CNBC days after the Hamas attack, adding that donors should cut contributions to Penn — an early example of a prominent Jewish business figure using their sway to combat campus anti-Israel activism after October 7.
Rowan carries weight at the university, serving as the chair of the advisor's board at UPenn's Wharton School of Business. In 2018, he gave $50 million to Wharton — the school's largest-ever donation at the time.
His first high-profile foray into campus politics came several weeks before October 7, when he helped organize a letter criticizing Penn for hosting a Palestinian literary festival on the eve of Yom Kippur featuring former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, who has been widely accused of antisemitism.
That frustration boiled over with the university's response to the Hamas attack. In the CNBC interview, he criticized then-President Liz Magill for posting on social media about her dog but not the massacre in Israel in the days after the invasion.
Magill resigned months later, following a widely criticized appearance in Congress and after intense pressure to step down from donors, including Rowan.
Rowan continued to castigate anti-Israel protests on college campuses, saying about the encampment demonstrations last spring on a podcast, "It's not antisemitism. It is anti-Americanism.”
Rowan has long been active in Jewish philanthropy, serving as board chair of the UJA-Federation of New York and as chairman of the Youth Renewal Fund, an education nonprofit in Israel, as well as vice chairman of the fund's partner Darca, a network of schools. He has continued to call for Jewish communal activism in the months since Magill's resignation, saying in a May podcast interview that a silver lining of October 7 is that American Jews are now "off the sidelines.”
He has also put his money behind Trump, donating $1 million to his 2020 presidential campaign, according to Forbes.
Now, Trump may reward that support, though he has yet to settle on a Treasury secretary. Internal sparring over the role has become public in recent days: Health Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk, who has become one of Trump's close associates, have thrown their weight behind Lutnick, who Musk said "will actually enact change.”
Rowan himself does not appear to have commented on the appointment. Apollo and UJA-Federation of New York also did not respond to requests for comment.