Fate has been kind to us. It has stepped in at key junctures in our lives and given us the resources to help others, be they family, friends or good causes.

Fate stepped in to introduce the two of us to each other when were just 16-years-old. It brought a French girl together with an American guy and together we raised four children in Wales. Obvious.

We have the family we always dreamed of, two older boys, two younger girls. Given the challenges of different nationalities, languages, religions and, finally, creating a home in a country foreign to us both, it is not surprising that we are international in outlook.

Fate also set us in the right place at the right time and with the right people. We earned our wealth largely in the last 15 years, although it comes from seeds planted years before: good education, strong family values and a belief that hard work and good ideas would be rewarded. How wealthy we’ve become is a recipe of three parts luck, one part smarts and one part determination.

Over the years, we have seen so many people without the advantages we had; people who can’t possibly reach their dreams no matter how hard they work, children without food or education, old people living in the cold because they can’t afford heating or proper housing, people deprived of basic human rights and people suffering from cancer or other heinous diseases…the list goes on and on … We don’t believe it’s an option that we should sit on the sidelines and watch when we can use our good fortune to be the good fortune of others. We’ve created a family foundation in order to accomplish this goal. We can see a day when our children will continue this work and, hopefully, their children after them.

In business and in our personal lives, we have followed 2 main principles: we believe in everyone’s right to have a chance at happiness and we believe that the power of a team is invariably stronger than the power of any single individual. We try to apply these principles to our philanthropic endeavours and that is why we think the Giving Pledge is such a fantastic idea. We hope that through the Giving Pledge we can send a message of philanthropy that many people will hear and, hopefully, encourage others to follow.

The Giving Pledge brings philanthropists together and we look forward to working and sharing ideas with like-minded people such that 1+1 = 3, very simply:

The Giving Pledge steps up the pace,
To make this world a better place.