Harbert to receive Business Alabama 2026 Lifetime Achievement award

Auburn alumnus Raymond Harbert, a 1982 business graduate, is one of four distinguished Alabama businesspeople who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from Business Alabama magazine on January 30 in Birmingham.

Harbert is founder, executive chairman and former CEO of Harbert Management Corp., an independent investment firm headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, with offices across the United States and Europe.

Harbert began his career in the early 1980s with Harbert International Inc., the construction subsidiary of Harbert Corporation, the company founded and built by his father, John Harbert.

In 1990, at the age of 31, Harbert was promoted to president and CEO of Harbert Corporation, which was a multi-billion-dollar diversified conglomerate.

In 1993, he launched Harbert Management Corporation, the first multi alternative asset investment management firm in Alabama. Today, HMC manages eight different investment strategies with over $8 billion of assets under management.

In 2013, Harbert and his wife Kathryn made a transformational $40 million gift to Auburn University’s College of Business. The college was renamed in his honor.

Since then, the Harbert College of Business has invested their gift in people, programs and facilities that have enabled unprecedented student enrollment growth and propelled the college to new heights as one of the premier public business schools in the country.   

The gift has enhanced students’ overall education and provided more experiential learning opportunities, rejuvenated the research enterprise by attracting and rewarding top-performing faculty, and enabled new collaborations with industry partners.  

Harbert serves on the boards and executive committees of the Robert Meyer Foundation, Children’s of Alabama and Birmingham Business Alliance. He is a trustee emeritus at Auburn. He was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2015, and in 2024, inducted into the Alabama Business Hall of Fame.

Raymond and Kathryn are active philanthropists, having made significant gifts both in time and capital to numerous organizations, including Auburn University, Red Mountain Theatre, Children’s of Alabama, University of Alabama at Birmingham and United Way of Central Alabama. They have three children and nine grandchildren and live in Birmingham.

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Learn more about the honorees of the Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Business Alabama release.