David Booth

From his first sales experience selling shoes as a teenager in Lawrence, Kansas, to working on the team that launched the first index fund, to pioneering what would come to be known as factor investing, David Booth didn't just witness the financial revolution—he helped lead it. For five decades, he’s bridged the worlds of academic theory and practical investing, collaborating with Nobel laureates to build Dimensional Fund Advisors into a $1 trillion global firm that has democratized evidence-based investing for millions.

Booth earned degrees in economics and business from the University of Kansas, followed by an MBA from the University of Chicago. His Chicago education proved instrumental to his success, leading to a transformative gift to the business school in 2008. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business now bears his name, and the contribution continues to support faculty and their field-defining research. 

Through his visionary application of financial theory to real-world investing, Booth has established himself as one of the most influential figures in investing—an outsider who challenged Wall Street’s conventional wisdom and won.