As a Yale undergraduate, David Millstone took inspiration from the diverse talents of the community around him—a “fascinating mix of people who are exceptional but who don’t wear it on their sleeve.” Whether in seminars dedicated to analyzing poems or exploring the existence of numbers, in dining hall conversations with a concert violinist or watching a classmate perform improv comedy, “Every single semester,” Millstone explains, “something happened that entirely changed the way I look at the world.” He had arrived on campus with a love of math and science and a belief, fostered by his earlier schooling, that those fields were well defined—a matter of putting in hard work to arrive at the right answer. Instead, in a course on the philosophy of science, he discovered that the very nature of how science works was up for debate. This experience, which informed his decision to major in mathematics and philosophy, was the first of many at Yale that instilled in him the value of questioning assumptions that constrain our view of the world.
Fast-forward to the present, and that same ethos has guided Millstone’s professional success. Over the last fifteen years, as co-chief executive officer of Standard Industries, he has built a global enterprise that today includes eight operating companies that collectively generate more than $11 billion in revenue; a multi-billion-dollar investment platform, Standard Investments; and a real estate investment, management, and development company, Winter Properties. Among Standard’s businesses are GAF, the world’s largest roofing and waterproofing manufacturer; GAF Energy, the world’s largest producer of solar roofing; and W.R. Grace, a market-leading specialty chemicals platform. Across operations in more than eighty countries, and with over 20,000 employees, Standard is dedicated to what Millstone terms “the digital transformation of the physical world.”
Millstone’s path into business was hardly assured. As a newly minted Yale graduate, he considered pursuing a Ph.D. and ultimately becoming a professor of philosophy. Instead, he followed his then-girlfriend (now wife, Jennifer H. Millstone ’00 B.A.), whom he had begun dating at Yale, to New York City, where he worked in investment banking at Bear Stearns, and then to Harvard Law School, where they each completed their J.D. in 2005. Today, in addition to their professional pursuits (Jennifer Millstone is president and founder of Infinite Hospitality), the Millstones are involved in such civic and philanthropic endeavors as the Partnership for Public Service, the 92nd Street Y, the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance, the Bard Prison Initiative, and the Fortune Society. Through Standard Industries, they also support a number of community-focused organizations and vocational training initiatives, including GAF Roofing Academy, which provides career training geared toward such underserved communities as veterans, the formerly incarcerated, and at-risk youth, and GAF Community Matters, a social impact initiative that directs building materials and financial support to communities in need.
A member of the University Council and of his class’s 25th Reunion Gift Committee, Millstone relishes every opportunity to return to New Haven and has particularly enjoyed introducing his four daughters—ages nine to seventeen—to the university where their parents met, with coffee shops, dorm rooms, and bars that have long been part of family lore. The geography and architecture of the campus, he says, provide space for the informal interactions that are just as much a hallmark of the Yale experience as lectures and classroom conversations: “The most interesting and indelible things tend to happen in the in-between spaces.”
Millstone—an accomplished ski mountaineer, scuba diver, and Ironman triathlete—lives with his family in Aspen, Colorado, where they enjoy getting outdoors together at every opportunity.