Philip Berber

Change Agent, Idea generator, Jewish, Philanthropist, Social entrepreneur

Philip Berber was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. After graduating from University College Dublin in 1979 with a commerce (business) degree, he relocated to London, England where he held positions in the marketing departments of a number of large American Corporations including Ford Motor Company, Avon Cosmetics and Bausch & Lomb. In 1986, Philip joined Systems Designers working in their defense and aerospace systems division as the Head of International Marketing for Artificial Intelligence Technology. Philip founded Financia in 1988, his first start-up. The London-based company provided advanced financial market analysis and predictive technologies. In 1991, Financia was bought by a Houston-based financial markets predictive technology company, Frontier Financial. In 1993, he joined GK Capital, a quantitative institutional money manager using computer systems to determine when to buy and sell in the currency markets. In 1995, Philip formed CyBerCorp, an electronic brokerage group, providing trading and execution technology to day traders over the Internet. In March 2000, CyBerCorp sold for $488 million to the Charles Schwab organization. That same year, Philip was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Austin; he was also a finalist of the national Entrepreneur of the Year award. The sale of CyBerCorp has allowed Philip to develop his ideas and plans for a new model of philanthropy and international aid. He and his wife Donna currently operate their own family foundation called A Glimmer of Hope which has projects in Ethiopia, the United Kingdom and Austin. In Ethiopia, A Glimmer of Hope provides Humanitarian Aid and Microcredit initiatives. Since 2000, A Glimmer of Hope has funded more than 3,000 projects and positively impacted the lives of more than one million people with its efforts in the areas of water and sanitation, education, health care, enterprise and agriculture. The Berbers have been featured in Worth Magazine’s 25 Most Generous Young Americans issue and Business Week’s list of the 50 Most Generous Philanthropists.