Yes, that's exactly what we wished we were so that we could have buzzed into a top secret meeting of the world's top capitalists who are also leading philanthropists.
As the New York Times reports in its May 20, 2009 article "A Quiet Meeting of America’s Very Richest" the group included Bill Gates; Warren E. Buffett; Mayor Bloomberg; George Soros; the real estate developer Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe; Oprah Winfrey; David Rockefeller Sr. and his son David Rockefeller Jr.; Ted Turner; and Peter G. Peterson the co-founder of the Blackstone Group, the private equity firm.
The meeting took place on May 5, 2009 at Rockefeller University, but it took weeks before anyone noticed.
The New York Times said "Participants steadfastly refused to reveal details about the meeting, citing an agreement to protect the confidentiality of the discussion.
The participants have reputations as outsize philanthropists, and many have teamed up on causes. Mr. Buffet, for example, recently pledged to donate the bulk of his fortune, currently estimated at $37 billion, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Together, the men and women at the meeting had donated more than $72.5 billion to charitable causes since 1996, according to an estimate by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
On Wednesday afternoon, the silence was finally broken when one of the participants, Patricia Q. Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Gates Foundation and current chairwoman of the Smithsonian Institution, said the others had been concerned about privacy, not secrecy.
“Various members of the group have been talking about philanthropy,” she said. “This is a time when the needs are great. So it seemed like a really good time to get together.”
The event was jointly conceived by Mr. Buffett, Mr. Gates and the elder Mr. Rockefeller, Ms. Stonesifer said. “This was the first time this particular group had come together and shared a table,” she said, but added that with their charitable activities and general prominence, “the degrees of separation were few.”
The discussions centered on charitable giving, and participants talked about their personal causes, told of lessons they had learned, and suggested ways to improve and increase philanthropic efforts, Ms. Stonesifer said."
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