Climbing Ranks
James Frederic Rothenberg was born July 16, 1946, in Pittsburgh. He was the son of Henry EdwardRothenberg, a vice president of Gimbels in that city, according to his 1968 wedding announcement in the New York Times.
Rothenberg received his bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard in 1968, and went on to receive an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
“Jim was one of the best friends Harvard has ever had, and his selfless leadership, gentle wisdom, humane spirit, and boundless generosity in service of Harvard will live on always,” Drew Faust, Harvard’s president, said in a statement on the school’s website.
After joining what was then known as Capital Research & Management Co., Rothenberg climbed the ranks, early on working as equity investment analyst. During his career, he was one of eight members of the management committee, and served as vice chairman of the board and a portfolio manager of Growth Fund of America.
Multi-Manager System
The firm, founded in 1931 by Jonathan Bell Lovelace, is known for a multiple-manager system, which divides each fund’s assets among a number of nearly anonymous investors who pick stocks or bonds based on their own research.
Rothenberg was active in Los Angeles-area philanthropies and served as chairman of the board of Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. In March, the California Institute of Technology announced that he and his wife, Anne, had donated $15 million to support research and graduate education.
He was married in 1968 to the former Rita Jo-An Miller. In 1974, he was married to the former Anne Fitzpatrick.