Robert Owens

Robert "Bob" Owens was born in New York City to Herb and Fritzi Owens, Holocaust survivors who fled Vienna at the dawn of World War II. He was a member of the Horace Mann School Class of 1967 and later graduated from New York University with Honors in Politics in 1971. His early career was in journalism and government: he worked on Capitol Hill for two U.S. Representatives and then joined the reporting staff of syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, where he helped uncover elements of the Nixon-era "dirty tricks." With reporting partner Jack Cloherty he co-authored the column "The Investigators," which ran for roughly two years in more than 100 newspapers via the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He also wrote the nationally syndicated "Insure Yourself" column for four years.

In 1977–78 he returned to New York to join the family business, Owens Group Insurance, founded by his father Herbert Owens in 1957. Bob rose to President and led the firm — a personal, business, and life/health insurance brokerage based in Englewood Cliffs, NJ and New York, NY — until the end of his life. He served on the firm's Board of Directors, Management Committee, and Advisory Committee.

Beyond insurance, Owens was active philanthropically and in civic life. He served as a trustee of the Horace Mann School, and on the boards of the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership at NYU, and the U.S. Friends of the Jewish Museum Vienna. NYU's Washington, DC program hosts "The Robert O. Owens and Eve Klein Internship Award" for investigative journalism, reflecting his journalism roots.

His appearance in startup-investor databases (e.g., Foundersuite) reflects personal angel activity at the seed stage; his primary professional identity was as an insurance-industry executive rather than a full-time investor.

• Listed in investor databases as an angel investor participating in seed rounds.
• No publicly stated, self-authored investment thesis, sector preference, or check-size guidance could be verified.
• As an individual angel (rather than a fund), any investing was done in a personal capacity out of the New York / New Jersey metro area.