Mike Novogratz Rocks in Hamptons as David Einhorn Watches Polo

(Bloomberg) -- Sukey and Mike Novogratz were at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett Sunday to see Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real perform one night before they opened for the Rolling Stones.

The packed house watched the son of Willie Nelson unfurl songs that capture the pain of our time with a hopeful ‘60s vibe. The title song of his new album, “Turn Off the News (Build a Garden),” set the tone, folksy but ready to rock. Then he literally threw it back with a cover of “Carry On” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

In on-stage banter, Nelson talked of marriage (“that might never happen”) and performing “Georgia On My Mind” on tour with his dad while dating a woman named Georgia. When the romance ended, he wrote the song “Forget About Georgia.”

Sitting a few feet away from the Novogratzes: Anjelica Huston, Carey Lowell and Firefly3’s Tom Freston, painter John Alexander and iHeartMedia’s John Sykes.

Down the road in Water Mill, one thing missing from the Robin Hood Foundation’s polo benefit earlier in the day was a good band, and Lukas Nelson’s would have been perfect.

Just imagine the country rocker crooning lyrics from his “Turn Off the News (Build a Garden)”:

I believe that every heart is kind
Some are just a little underused
Hatred is a symptom of the times
Lost in these uneducated blues

These lines capture Robin Hood’s mission to lift up families from poverty by helping them access quality education, health care, housing and job training.

“We’re working on everything, because of the compounded nature of poverty,” said Wes Moore, Robin Hood’s CEO, standing next to the polo field owned by Diana and Joe DiMenna. The event -- known as the Hamptons Cup -- raised more than $500,000 for the group.

Moore recently defended the city of Baltimore, where he lives, after disparaging words from President Donald Trump.

“We cannot tolerate making a mockery of human suffering,” Moore said. “I feel it’s important to be able to use my voice.”

As for the issues he wants to see presidential candidates focus on:

“It comes down to dealing with social inequality,” Moore said. “Everything else is details. It’s about, what do we have to do to make sure opportunity becomes real.”

Larry Robbins of Glenview Capital, in his third and final year as Robin Hood’s chairman, echoed the position.

“The election is an opportunity for Robin Hood to make public some of the struggles of the working poor,” Robbins said. He added that Moore is the right leader to push that agenda forward. “Wes has a sense of urgency that’s appropriate to the crisis in New York and the United States.”

Also attending the polo match, won by DiMenna and Nacho Figueras’s team, were David Einhorn, Anna Nikolayevsky and Jon Harris, who spent time with his daughter as she got her face painted with the logo for the app TikTok.

One 12-year-old boy at the event was so inspired he gave the contents of his wallet to Moore, handing him an envelope containing about $200 earned in a year doing chores.

Connecting polo to poverty fighting isn’t the only way generosity can be expressed in a wealthy enclave like the Hamptons.

On Saturday morning, Corey Jassem of Goldman Sachs won his division in the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s 3-mile paddle board race in Sag Harbor. The event raised $650,000.

That evening, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was at the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s dinner dance in an air-conditioned tent. Attending was a priority even with a heavy travel schedule that will next take him to Peru, Ross said just before the band started playing the Bee Gees. “This is the only hospital on the East End,” Ross said.

Then there was something entirely different: the All Star Code summer fundraiser, which raised more than $1 million for the group’s educational programs. Christina Lewis Halpern founded the nonprofit to “create a more equitable pipeline toward wealth and equality.”

At her mom Loida Lewis’s house in East Hampton last month, about a dozen young men of color, all All Star Code alumni, pitched their tech business ideas to guests including Goldman vet Val Carlotti and tech investor Frank Baker.

At a table with an ocean view, Garrett Burroughs and Navid Mamoon demonstrated CodeABLE, a program that allows the visually impaired to code by voice started by Burroughs, a student at Carnegie Mellon.

Gary Coltrane, who studied computer science at Marist College, created DayStrive to help the formerly incarcerated find jobs. The South Bronx resident got the idea after running into a friend who’d recently been released from prison.

“This is a prison-to-work, prison-to-housing pipeline,” said Coltrane, who’s looking for $50,000 in $10,000 increments in a pre-seed round. He started participating in All Star Code when he was 16 and wanted to become a martial arts fighter. The organization “accelerated my coding” and inspired a new career path, he said.

Charles Phillips, chief executive of Infor, was impressed. “I offered them all internships,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Steve Dickson

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