All right. I dont consider myself a journalist and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of the running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Where are you from originally . Thomas i was born in new york. Shery your father was a businessperson . Thomas i lived in new york until i was eight, then moved to florida. David thomas i was born in new. Shery you wanted to reduce your taxes, you moved to florida. Thomas very precocious. I knew at eight Capital Gains taxes were best paid in florida. David you went to high school at the rose, one of the most famous warning schools in the world, in switzerland. Then oxford and you got a phd in history. What type . Thomas the undergrad was in what is called modern history which by english standards means when the romans leave britain. David when did you move back to the United States . Thomas what happened was as i was working at oxford on my thesis, i took a business trip to israel, and the sixday drop a lot can happen in israel and it turned into a six week trip to limit the girl who would wouldi met the girl who become my wife and we have been together 30 years and spent the entire time. Ultimately i got interested in commodities and went off and started my own company. David where were you living . New york thomas newark new york. David what expertise did you have to start a business . Thomas i had no expertise. There was really no reason to give me any backing. Fortunately my first foray was in silver in 1993. The zeitgeist was silver was going to go down to two dollars because of silver halide. I believe people got the analysis wrong and it had a better chance of going back to 50. I put my money on silver options and silver went from 3. 5 to five dollars in short order and i made enough money to decide ive didnt want to do that anymore but i would take all of that money and put enough on buying an option on a silver property. David where did you get the money to buy the options . Thomas i started with 10,000. I had a little bit of savings. Turned that into hundreds of thousands of dollars and then put the money on a property in idaho. And i realized around that time that we didnt have much competition. So i took whatever money i had and went to peru and bolivia and mexico and i would put down options on these properties. Found icertain time, i had as interesting a portfolio of option properties as any existing silver company. I knew even though i wasnt ready for prime for prime time and even though the story was a little bit flaky and delusional, a new york type with no background in engineering or starting a mining company, i kept it lowkey but i was introduced to george soros. He and his brother paul invested in may. David how old were you . Was 32, 33. David you were married thendavid . Thomas i was engaged. David did your fiance say what do you do for a living . Thomas she was instrumental in the entire process. When i had the vision of buying silver mines, it was in the middle of the night and she was at nyu. She had left the israeli air nyue and was studying at and apparently at 3 00 in the morning i sat up in bed and said write this down so i dont forget it, buy silver mines. So she said either way last night you told me to write down buy silver mines. I am reminding you but i is saying that is also sexy. I am saying that is so sexy. She has an unerring insight. David how did it work out . Thomas it suited my attitude to take that money and buy assets and hold those assets. Having a historical bend allowed me to see the market through the prism of history. , andyou see these cycles you understand human psychology and fear and greed, the history gives you a great perspective. If you own the assets, and you dont go into debt, it becomes a function of time before you become fashionable again. We made a huge discovery in bolivia. That is where the fortune originated. David did you ever visit . Thomas many times. David usually when people makedavid money and silver they will stay and keep doing it. It is like going to las vegas and gambling. Thomas i retired when it came time to build it. I said i cant even program my vcr. To build the biggest mine in the history of bolivia you have got the wrong guy. Let me go. So they said i could. I went into platinum and got lucky, and went into 2000sarbons in the early and that is where we had our biggest score. David what did you know about oil and gas . Thomas nothing. But it was already a good pedigree in terms of what had happened previously. I felt oil which was in the high teens and which again the conventional wisdom was oil was going to go back to a normative 12 to 15, maybe under 10 again, my view was it would go to 100. I created a Company Called lior, named after our two children, and we wish prospecting and really, in bolivia, got really lucky with what we found. David oil and gas went up. Oil went from 18 to 100. 100 was my target. We hit that in 2007 and we sold the Energy Company in november 2007. David did you say i should retire or what did you decide to do next . Have been a failure at retirement. I wanted to retire at 40, then i came up with the Energy Company. When we sold the company i briefly thought of retiring but oil was at 100, 120. Gold was around 650. I was a believer we were going to have an economic crisis which is why we sold in 2007, the platinum and oil, because they were sensitive. I wanted to go into an undervalued currency and felt bold offered the best risk reward proposition. Wasd when you got in it 600 an ounce and today it is trading at thomas almost 1300. David the u. S. Has most of its gold at fort knox . Thomas most. David is it in jewelry or little gold bars . How does it sit there . Thomas i believe large gold bars. That is the way it looked in goldfinger. We never lived with our paintings. David where did you put them . Thomas museums. It gave us more joy knowing these paintings in private collections were all on loan so we created a Lending Library, and we lent these paintings anonymously. David lets talk about another quite of your luck part of your life which is art. You are the owner of any it 16 rembrandts. Rembrandt painted how many paintings . Thomas approximately 350. David what made you interested in him . There are a lot of great print great painters. Thomas i fell in love with rembrandt as an artist when i was six years old, when my mother took me to the metropolitan and i encountered rembrandt for the very first time. And it spoke to me. O use that cliched expression there was something about it. I cant possibly imagine that i was that precocious to understand his insights on the human condition, but nonetheless whether it was the contrast of light and dark, whether it was the intensity of the inner life, it spoke to me. From that time on every weekend we would go to visit rembrandt. David did your mother say there is something wrong with my son who is focused on rembrandt . There arent that many six euros focus on sixyearolds focused on rembrandt. Thomas she voted with her feet. After the 10th or 12th weekend we went to visit rembrandt, she said i think it is time for me to broaden his horizons. She took me to moma. Encountering a white canvas with a red line across it , and so she says, i was missing my two front teeth. I crossed my arms, shook my head and said mommy, please take me back to the rembrandt. [laughter] thomas we went back to the metropolitan. You were successful in business you said now i can afford to buy some rembrandts, is that right . Thomas no. Selfknowledge is a journey. So i never intended to become an art collector. In fact when my wifes mother s said yourtist really should become an art collector, you are historian, you love classical art and perhaps a because it was my i said to her i will never become a vulgar materialist. Three months later, daphne and i were embarked upon a buying spree that was roughly on average one painting a week for five years. David dutch paintings . Thomas all the dutch, golden age. David what years roughly . Thomas in the 17th century. Thomas david were they more modestly priced . Thomas we clearly found there was a vacuum in the marketplace. Undervalued. Was masterpiecesto buy of rembrandt for less than the price of andy warhols. There are 70,000 pieces of andy warhol. There was one collector who has 10,000. When you compare the scarcity of the warhols with the rembrandt, we didnt collect in that area because we felt it was good we collected because people allowed us to be able to take advantage of the fact that we had that rapacious method and taste. David when you are buying rembrandts, you dont want a lot of people to know you are buying them. How did you mask the fact you were the buyer or did you not . First wethe began collecting in 2003. 14, 15 the first 13, years we were anonymous. We never lived with our paintings. David where did you put them . Thomas museums. We felt that we were taking them out of the private domain and that it gave us more joy knowing that these paintings which were in private collections were all on loan. We created a Lending Library and we lent these paintings anonymously. Only the museums new periods of people really didnt know who was behind the collection and we liked it like that. David today your collection is called thomas the lightning collection. David how many works are in it . Thomas 250. David and you have lent to places like the louvre . [indiscernible] is that very common . Thomas we had our coming out party at the louvre in 2017. We were persuaded we should put all of the Scholarship Online and make the academic and scholarly attributes of the collection available to curators, students and historians, dealers, collectors, but we also knew the tradeoff was we would lose the anonymity. Once we decided to do that, it was also lets have an piecesion of some of the of the collection. We started with the louvre with 30. The collection cant be replicated. Literally the numbers, it cannot be done. The next largest collection of rembrandt has two paintings in it. There are only 35 or so in private hands. This is basically the largest. It is a responsibility we have to be able to find a way to of helping cause 300, 400 have another years. We believe he is the most important painter who ever lived. David we would always be happy to talk to you if you have interest in the national gallery. Do people call you up and say i have a rembrandt but i dont want people to know and sometimes it is a fake . Thomas what they usually call me about, not really fake what they are after rembrandt, school of rembrandt. On occasion the ones i love the most are when people come to me and offer me paintings we already own. [laughter] david what is it you think makes a leader . Thomas the greatest quality of leadership is character and the greatest quality of character is genuinely understanding why you are leading people to do something and giving back. Cicero said that gratitude is the greatest of all the virtues and the mother of all the rest. I have no doubt that that is the key. David lets talk about another subject that is passionate for you, and that is tigers and cats. Thomas if i have one passion which is even greater than rembrandt, it would be wildlife conservation. As a family, we had a very strong affinity for the belief that we have to give back to the environment. Human beings as a species or parasites. On the planet earth. Our great passion of the big cats is something that has fascinated me from the time of fell in love with rembrandt, from the time i fell in love with history, all of my passions date back to ages of six and 12. That if i was going to go into business one pivot would be able to back to this first grade love and to enable the great wildlife conservationists who did have those aptitudes so they would be able to save the species that we love. That is what led to the creation , which is the only Global Organization solely dedicated to the conservation of big caps, their critical habitats and working with the people. David lyons . Thomas lions, tigers, snow leopards. David what will lead to their extinction . Thomas the real threat to the cats need athat wide range. They need lots of land, they need protein. When you have home it human encroachment, first of all it means they have smaller quantities of land, the prey density shrinks, and unfortunately there is a propensity for humananimal conflict. Closecan be dangerous in proximity to people. You have seen the population of lions shrink 90 over the last century. A lot of it follows this wreckage of land in africa but it is the same with tigers. David you are involved when many different with many different things. What is your passion the most . Thomas the area that moves me the most is wildlife conservation. Environmental philanthropy makes of globaltops philanthropy and most of it is dealing with global warming. Very few people actually give to the conservation of species and i genuinely believe that the greatest spiked gratification i have had is knowing that there are certain species that will not blink out at least in my lifetime because of the efforts that my wife daphne and i have made. David what would you like your legacy to be . Thomas when people describe to me the word which is most often used is passionate. Id until relatively recently never thought very much about that word. I assumed everyone was passionate about something. Realize thatme to most people are fortunate if they are even passionate about their children. To the extent that i am passionate about being able to use art as a way to build bridges, to save endangered species, to get back to the study of history, i am very blessed. I wont be able to shape i legacy. The only way i wish in which i deserve to have a legacy is if i move the needle in any of those areas in which i have bring my passion to bear. David what is it you think makes a leader . Live, thee longer i more i realize character is really destiny. Experiencedt i have human interaction, the more i have come to believe that the greatest quality of leadership is character and the greatest islity of character genuinely understanding why you are leading people to do something and giving back. Cicero said that gratitude is the greatest of all the virtues and the mother of all the rest. I have no doubt that that is the key. That is the beginning of happiness. Twod lets conclude with final passions. One is threepiece suits. Where did that come from . Thomas a year before my bar mitzvah. [laughter] thomas i had my first threepiece suit and being ameone with an affinity for relatively conservative outlook, not conservative necessarily in the sense of what we call social or political but i prefer prescient happiness to future utopia. And i havent changed. And the beautiful part about it is every three, 4, 5 years i become fashionable. [laughter] david a second and last passion we will talk about is the 90 2nd street y. Thomas it has always been a creed, every race, belief asan area an area where we have elevated discourse, open to the arts and where we provide a venue where inple can come and engage the greatest aspect of our democracy which is genuine conversation held in elevated and tolerant spirit. I view philanthropy as being concentric circles in new york. The 92nd street y is my home. I am always evening that relationship and it goes out from there. David thank you for a very interesting conversation. Impressive life and contributions to humanity. Thank you very much. Thomas thank you, david. He grew up in a workingclass neighborhood in baltimore. His single mother working nights and weekends to graduate college and go on for a masters and phd while his public and private education taught him talent is distribution without regard to zip code. He went on to become a National Leader in education as Senior Vice President at georgetown and present at franklin and Marshall College in pennsylvania leading the way to make sure talented lowincome students got the same opportunities as others. Now quarter field is taking on