While students in rural areas graduate from high school at roughly the same rate as students in more populated areas, far fewer go on to college. Byron Trott, who grew up in Union, Mo. (population: around 13,000), beat those odds, earning degrees that led to a nearly three-decade career at Goldman Sachs and his current position as co-CEO of BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank and investment firm.
Now Trott and his wife Tina are working to help other small-town students do the same. In 2018, they founded the rootEd Alliance, which places dedicated college and career advisers in rural high schools (“My guidance counselor also taught driver’s ed and was the football coach,” Trott says). That was followed in 2023 by a second initiative called the Small Town And Rural Students (STARS) Network, which helps private colleges and universities recruit small-town and rural students. The two programs have so far helped 80,000 rural students pursue college and other postsecondary school pathways—a number the couple is looking to expand, fueled by their 2024 pledge to donate an additional $130 million over the next decade. “We get so many letters from students who do the program in rootEd or who go through STARS,” Tina says. “They tell us they had no idea that this kind of education was out there and could be open to them.”