Bob Carr

National

Robert O. Carr (Bob Carr) founded Give Something Back in 2003 as a gesture of gratitude for a $250 college scholarship he had received unexpectedly as a senior at Lockport (IL) Township High School forty years earlier. The son of a verbally and physically abusive father and a mother who worked nights as a waitress, Bob had grown up without a bedroom or a place to study in a crowded little house on a country road 35 miles southwest of Chicago. Against the wishes of his parents, who were opposed to him going to college, Bob enrolled at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. While working full-time in food service, he earned a mathematics degree in three years and a master’s in computer science in his fourth year. After working brief stints for the Bank of Illinois and serving with the faculty of Parkland College, he went into business on his own. He struggled for decades, sometimes on the verge of home foreclosure or losing his car to repossession. He ultimately achieved remarkable success as the founder and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, a Fortune 1000 company on the New York Stock Exchange. He later founded the payments company Beyond, with company profits largely directed to Give Back. Over the years, Bob has donated over $100 million toward scholarships and mentoring for more than 2,000 young people throughout the nation. The recipient of numerous awards for his business acumen and philanthropy, Bob was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016 to a key White House post focused on the nation’s infrastructure security. The father of six children and seven grandchildren, Bob lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, Kathie.