Foundation honoring Blackstone's Wesley LePatner aims to develop 1,000 next-gen leaders

In July of 2025, Wesley was killed on the 28th. We had a few days together alone, which was like the first time in many, many years we'd had that much quality time together away from the kids. And we were talking that entire time about impact. She said, I need to do more. I'm not getting enough done. I'm not reaching enough people. And I thought about that right after she was killed. And I started meeting with people and thinking about, what do I do? I have to keep her going. I said to myself, I'm going to build something that is more impactful than she could ever have imagined doing in her lifetime. And if I can achieve that, I will have some piece of peace with her life and that I didn't let her go. I started forming around this idea of what became this foundation and the flagship program we have, which is called Wesley Leaders, which is really about taking these exceptional rising leaders in our private sector community, people who have demonstrated success, but also have this values system at their core, which looks like Wesley's, figuring out how to dramatically accelerate their impact professionally, civically, philanthropically, but always around elevating others around them. And we're at a time now in this country where we have to focus on getting the most out of our private sector leadership. It is not enough to say, I'm going to work my entire career and then at the age of 75, I'm going to be really wonderful and charitable and volunteer.