Colonel Jack Jacobs
He was in Vietnam twice, both times as an advisor to Vietnamese infantry battalions, earning three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars and the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest combat decoration. Jacobs retired as a Colonel in 1987.
He was a founder and Chief Operating Officer of AutoFinance Group Inc, one of the firms to pioneer the securitization of debt instruments; the firm was subsequently sold to Key Bank. He was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust, where he ran foreign exchange options worldwide and was a partner in the institutional hedge fund business, raising more than $2 Billion. Jacobs subsequently founded a similar business for Lehman Brothers and retired again in 1995 to pursue investments.
He is a principal of The Fitzroy Group, a firm that specializes in the development of residential real estate in London and invests both for its own account and in joint ventures with other institutions. He serves on a number of charitable boards of directors and is the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and Director Emeritus of the World War II Museum.
Jacobs holds the McDermott Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the US Military Academy and is an on-air analyst for NBC News, where he was a member of the team that produced the 2011 Murrow Award-winning Nightly News segment “Iraq: The Long Way Out.” Colonel Jacobs is also the co-author of the memoir, If Not Now, When?, published by Penguin and winner of the Colby Award. His second work of non-fiction is Basic, released by St. Martin’s Press in 2012.