This page features members of Duke’s Board of Trustees or other influential leaders and donors as part of ASJP’s Follow the Money Monday campaign, which started in fall 2025 and can also be found on our Instagram page. The Board of Trustees (BoT) is the university’s governing body, responsible for overseeing Duke’s financial decisions and its investment company, DUMAC. But how much do we really know about who serves on that board and in other positions of serious responsibility at Duke University? This series examines the financial interests and political entanglements of key trustees to reveal how their connections and incentives may conflict with the values and interests of the Duke community — including its students, faculty, and workers.
David M. Rubenstein is a multi-billionaire donor to Duke, an alum, and a former chair of the Duke University Board of Trustees (2013-2017). He has high political and economic influence at Duke, with multiple buildings, programs, and fellowships named after him, including the Rubenstein Arts Center and the Rubenstein Library. He has also made significant donations to the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, scholarships, the Sanford School of Public Policy and athletics projects.
As federal funding to universities diminishes, they have increasingly depended on grants from military arms of the federal government and wealthy donors such as Rubenstein to establish programs, build and renovate buildings, fund initiatives, and shape the curriculum. This intensified shift to private philanthropy means that universities like Duke increasingly depend on and are accountable to the billionaire class rather than to their communities, the environment, or their students and workers.
But where does all this money come from? Rubenstein made his billions from private equity. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that has bankrolled war, occupation, genocide, and the destruction of the environment. The Carlyle Group has one of the largest fossil fuel portfolios of any private equity company in the world. It owns Combined Tactical Systems, which manufactures tear gas and armaments used by police and militaries around the world. They supply police and military agencies from at least four locations in North Carolina. As the public accountability initiative LilSis points out, “In recent years [tear gas and armaments produced by Combined Systems] have been used against protesters on at least four continents – from Venezuela to Ferguson and Standing Rock and from Tunisia to Palestine.” The Carlyle Group has profited from US imperialism, including the invasion and continued occupation and control of Iraq’s resources and infrastructure. These investors have made billions in profit from the genocide in Gaza through investments in defense contractors like BAE and Northrup Grumman, which manufacture the aircraft carrying out air strikes on Gaza. In 2004, the Center for Public Integrity wrote about how the Carlyle Group benefited from “a windfall of war” and Rubenstein’s long connections with the US government and its security apparatuses.
WHO IS SHARON MARCIL? Managing Director for North America (Former) and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group | Duke ’88 | Duke BoT Member, Vice Chair of the Audit and Compliance Committee, member of the Graduate and Professional Education and Research Committee
Between 2021 and 2026, Sharon Marcil was Managing Director for North America and remains Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. Boston Consulting Group worked with the Israeli and US governments to finance and set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its so-called “distribution centers,” where Israeli soldiers corralled and slaughtered Palestinians seeking aid. Soldiers at these sites killed 1760 Palestinians seeking aid between 27 May 2025 and 13 August 2025. The throttling of all other sources of aid intensified the forced starvation and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Marcil worked directly with a BCG employee named Ryan Ordway on the Trump presidential transition team in 2023. Ordway and the US defense practice division of BCG, which works out of the Washington DC office that Marcil directs, helped establish the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The Financial Times has reported that BCG’s role in setting up the GHF was more extensive than it has publicly described, stretching over seven months, covering more than $4 million of contracted work, and involving internal discussion at senior levels of the firm. BCG’s model included cost estimates for relocating more than 500,000 Gazans, with “relocation packages” worth $9,000 per person, totaling around $5 billion. After public outcry, BCG fired Ordway and another employee for supposedly “going rogue” in planning the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and has since disavowed this work, but BCG’s long-term involvement with the GHF from the beginning clearly implicates it in human rights violations, ethnic cleansing, forced starvation and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
WHO IS MARY BARRA? Chair and CEO of General Motors | Duke BoT Member, Vice Chair
Mary T. Barra is Chair and CEO of General Motors. She owns 433,527 shares of General Motors stock worth more than $25,120,722 as of October 20, 2025.
General Motors is one of the US companies profiting from the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. GM provides engines and other parts for multiple vehicles used by the Israeli military in its occupation and genocide in Gaza.
Israel buys these parts using US taxpayer money.
WHO IS KAREN KING? Managing Director and COO of Silver Lake | Duke ‘94 | Duke BoT Member, Finance Committee Chair
Karen M. King is the Managing Director and COO of Silver Lake, a private equity firm focused on technology and technology-enabled investments. Together with Zionist mega-donor Larry Ellison and his company Oracle, Silver Lake struck a deal to acquire a major share of the new U.S. company that will control TikTok.
On October 3, 2025, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with American social media influencers to discuss ways to boost pro-Israel messaging online. Reports indicate that influencers are likely being paid approximately $7,000 per post on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram through Bridges Partners, a firm working on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Netanyahu has described the Silver Lake-Oracle-TikTok deal as one of the most important and consequential transactions taking place right now, saying it could play a significant role in advancing support for Israel. Given Ellison’s strong pro-Israel advocacy, it is likely that this influence will come into play during the development of the U.S. version of TikTok’s algorithm and content moderation systems, over which Silver Lake is anticipated to exert considerable oversight.
WHO IS TIM COOK? CEO of Apple | Duke MBA ‘88 | Duke BoT Member
Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple. His net worth is estimated at $2.5 billion. Like other tech leaders, he has been flattering Donald Trump in return for US investment in his company. He recently gifted Trump a 24k gold plaque to thank him for a $600 billion investment.
Apple is complicit in multiple dimensions of Israeli apartheid and genocide. Current and former Apple employees in Apples Against Apartheid have called on Tim Cook to acknowledge genocide in Palestine and Congo. This complicity includes underhiring of qualified Palestinians in Apple’s Israel offices, economic complicity, retaliatory firings, collective punishment of anti-genocide Muslims and Jews, including the ongoing shutdown of the Muslims@Apple Diversity Network Association channel, and refusal to acknowledge loss of Palestinian life. Apple also has a research and development institution in Tel Aviv. In October 2023, Apple, alongside Google and Waze, disabled live traffic updates in Gaza and various parts of Israel at the request of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) before the start of a military operation. In April 2024, Apple employees and shareholders released an open letter urging the company to end donation matching for groups tied to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and settlement expansion in the West Bank. They called for a review of eligible charities, including Friends of the IDF and others supporting illegal Israeli settlements.
Are these the people we should trust to make decisions about Duke’s future during this critical time?