2025 Hamilton College Honorary Degree
Presented to David Blood ’81
At age 11, you and your family moved from just outside Detroit to Rio de Janeiro when your father, a corporate executive, was transferred. Living in Brazil exposed you to profound income inequality, which has shaped your worldview and continues to shape your career. Alleviating that disparity informs your investing principles and your philanthropic choices.
You are the third generation of the Blood family to attend Hamilton, following your grandfather Wayland, class of 1914, and your father Wayland “Bill” Blood, class of 1953. After receiving your degree in 1981, you earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, joined a Wall Street investment bank, made partner, and served as CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. It was there that you were first exposed to sustainable investing, or sustainable capitalism, an economic concept often attributed to you and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, one of the partners with whom you co-founded Generation Investment Management in 2004.
Seventeen years later, after proving the value and importance of integrating finance and sustainability, you launched the Generation subsidiary Just Climate to focus on high impact climate solutions. “There is no doubt in my mind,” you said at the time, “that a fundamental and important benefit of the rise in sustainable and ESG investing over the long term will be a cleaner planet and a more equitable, healthy and safe society.” Your goal at Generation is to mobilize the capital needed to overcome the threats facing our planet, challenges such as climate change, water scarcity, poverty, disease, growing income inequality, urbanization, and massive economic volatility. You ask questions aimed at finding not just a solution, but at arriving at the right solution through collaboration, empathy, and iteration.
You have brought that focus on equity to your service as a member of the Hamilton Board of Trustees. In 2009, you asked how much additional funding would be needed so Hamilton could immediately become need-blind in admission. Then you made a major gift to make this dream a reality. Five trustees followed your lead to achieve the goal. It was, you said, one of the most satisfying moments in your life.
“To limit students’ opportunity to go to Hamilton based on finance just felt inherently wrong to me,” you said, “and I felt that we couldn’t allow that to be the case going forward.”
A philanthropist is defined as “a person who seeks to promote the welfare of others, especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.”
You are a groundbreaking investment strategist, a design thinker, and a philanthropic exemplar. Your life has been a model for what Hamilton hopes to achieve with our students.
It is with an exceeding amount of pride and deepest honor that your alma mater presents you with this recognition of the values you and we cherish. Thank you for honoring us by your presence here tonight to accept this acknowledgment of your life’s work.
Kevin W. Kennedy
Trustee
December 2025
