A biography of Charles G. Koch
A life of lasting contributions
A life of lasting contributions
Since the 1960s, Charles has made understanding, applying and teaching what he calls "principles of human progress" his passion. This focus has enabled him to help increase the value of the small business his father co-founded by more than 8,000-fold, turning Koch into one of the most successful private companies anywhere.
Charles also founded Stand Together, a principles-based philanthropic community that works with a broad diversity of partners to empower millions of people. The more he learns about principles, the harder Charles works to help others find lives of meaning and fulfillment, while inspiring others to do the same.
Charles traces his success to a realization he had in the third grade. As he wrote in his 2020 book Believe in People, “The subject was something that many struggle with: math. One day, as my teacher wrote problems on the blackboard, I noticed that, while the answers were obvious to me, they weren’t to any of my classmates.”
His aptitude for math and abstract concepts has ultimately led to his lifelong focus on principles. He has studied diverse disciplines, such as science, engineering, history, economics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology. He seeks to find principles that can help him contribute and succeed — principles that have enabled people throughout history to improve their lives.
As Charles wrote in Believe in People, “I journeyed through works from Abraham Maslow, Karl Marx, and Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper, Vladimir Lenin and John Locke, along with many others… No topic was off-limits; no author was out of bounds. Even those I radically disagreed with shaped my understanding of how things work.”
Charles’ ongoing search has led him to conclude that “progress happens from the bottom up, when everyone is able to contribute.” He seeks to help people continue society’s economic and social progress, supporting “bottom-up empowerment” while opposing “top-down control” over people, whether in business, philanthropy or public policy.
“My North Star remains a society in which every person can realize their potential. I will strive to achieve this vision until I no longer can,” he wrote in 2020. “I take comfort in the knowledge that, when that day arrives, countless people from all walks of life will carry on, empowering others and elevating all.”
Charles was born on November 1, 1935, in Wichita, Kansas, the second of Fred and Mary Koch’s four sons. Despite their comfortable upbringing, Fred told Charles at a young age that he didn’t want his four sons to become “country club bums.” When Charles was six, Fred put him to work doing manual labor around on the family farm. What started with digging up dandelions and feeding animals graduated into milking cows, shoveling manure, baling hay, digging postholes and mending fences.
Charles recalls that he often did his chores within earshot of his friends, who were across the street yelling and splashing at the local swimming pool. “I said, ‘My goodness this is awful. I have such a mean father and they have fathers that really love them and let them have all this fun,’” Charles joked in 2015.
“I’m now convinced my pop’s tough love saved me,” Charles wrote in his New York Times bestselling book, Good Profit. “I had already attended eight schools by the time I graduated from high school. Years later, I asked my father why he hadn’t been as tough on the twins as he was on me. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘you plumb wore me out.’”
Later in life, Charles attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Charles enjoyed the experience at MIT, if not the education itself. By the end of his sophomore year, he was satisfied with his B-minus grade average. His father was not, saying, “Son, I don’t give a damn if you end up digging ditches for a living, but if you want me to pay for your education, you’re going to apply yourself.” His grade point average immediately jumped a grade level.
Charles earned a B.S. in general engineering, a M.S. in nuclear engineering and another M.S. in chemical engineering, all from MIT. After graduation, he stayed in Boston to work for the consulting firm Arthur D. Little.
“I entered MIT with no intention of returning to Wichita to work for my father,” Charles wrote in Good Profit in 2015. Yet in 1961, Fred asked him to come home to work for the family businesses, then known as Rock Island Oil & Refining Company and the much smaller Koch Engineering Company.
Charles initially refused, fearing he wouldn’t have the authority to try new things. But a month later, Fred told Charles he didn’t have long to live, and if Charles didn’t come back, Fred would have to sell the businesses. He promised Charles full authority to run Koch Engineering and eventually Rock Island. As a 25-year-old seeking an entrepreneurial opportunity, Charles agreed.
Fred’s first words to Charles upon his return were: “I hope your first deal is a loser; otherwise you’ll think you’re a lot smarter than you are.”
Charles was made president of Rock Island in 1966, and after his father’s passing the following year, he became chairman of the board and CEO. In 1968, the board renamed the company Koch Industries in Fred’s honor. In 2024, the board announced further changes to Koch’s name and corporate structure—establishing Koch, Inc. as the new toplevel holding company—to better reflect its diversified businesses and vision for the future.
Under Charles’s tenure, the company’s dramatic growth has been funded to a large degree by Koch’s practice of reinvesting 90% of profits each year. Koch and its companies today employ more than 120,000 individuals across the globe, up from about 300 in the mid-1960s.
Though traditionally known for its energy-related businesses, Koch now deploys approximately 95% of its capital in areas outside of fossil fuels. The company has expanded into a wide variety of businesses and industries, including the acquisitions of manufacturing companies INVISTA, Georgia-Pacific and Guardian, as well as technology companies Molex and Infor, while building a variety of other businesses.
Throughout decades of growth, Charles continues to emphasize what he calls “good profit.” “What I consider to be good profit comes from Principled Entrepreneurship™—creating superior value for our customers while consuming fewer resources and always acting lawfully and with integrity,” Charles wrote in 2015. “Good profit comes from making a contribution in society—not from corporate welfare or other ways of taking advantage of people.”
Koch has a long history of commitment to stewardship through consuming fewer resources, minimizing waste and continuously innovating to enhance manufacturing processes. The company was awarded the United States Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year award, the EPA's highest level of recognition, in 2017, 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Charles attributes Koch’s growth to its pursuit of its Vision, which is “to succeed long term by applying proven principles of human progress to help people improve their lives.” In 1990, he named this approach Market-Based Management®, which was renamed Principle Based Management® in 2022. A lifelong teacher as well as learner, Charles has developed the framework to enable individuals and organizations to succeed long term by focusing on creating value for others.
Empowering People to Lead Lives of Meaning
Charles made his first philanthropic investments in the early 1960s, providing scholarships to students at universities where he would give talks on principles.
In 2003, Charles founded the community today known as Stand Together. It quickly became the hub of his philanthropic work. Through Stand Together, he partners with thousands of community, educational, economic and public policy leaders to foster a society in which every person has the opportunity to realize their potential. He has inspired several hundred other business leaders and philanthropists to join Stand Together; they continue to support the organization’s work.
Charles has helped found or build many organizations, including the Stand Together Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Bill of Rights Institute and the Charles Koch Foundation, among others. In recognition of his business leadership and community involvement, he received numerous honors and awards, including three honorary doctorates.
“In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so. The same should be true of any government that disrespects its citizens,” Koch wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in 2014.
Charles learned valuable lessons, concluding that picking one political “team” held back his efforts to improve lives. In the late 2010s, he broadened his focus to supporting principled leaders regardless of party affiliation and uniting Americans across the political aisle. “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong,” Charles often said, quoting famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Charles and his fellow Stand Together partners did exactly that. He worked with Michael Bloomberg to urge free speech on college campuses, liberal activist Van Jones on criminal justice reform and Apple CEO Tim Cook to advocate for immigration reform — just a few examples of partnerships he has formed through Stand Together.
Charles acknowledges that many of his endeavors failed, including his initial foray into major party politics, but that doesn’t bother him. He believes that continual experimentation and trial and error are necessary to succeed in a changing economy and society. He often quotes the theorist Joseph Schumpeter, who spoke of “creative destruction.” In business and philanthropy, Charles aims to drive creative destruction, instead of being destroyed by it.
From an early age, Charles learned the importance of seeking out and partnering with others who have what he often calls “shared vision, shared values, and complementary capabilities.” “Where I've had good partnerships, I've been very successful. Where I haven't, I've generally failed,” Charles said in 2019.
Charles considers his marriage to Liz (December 22, 1972) his best and most cherished partnership. Those who know the couple often remark about their special bond, one born of mutual love and respect. “I'm good at the few things she isn't, and she's good at about everything else. So, we make each other better. That's been another one of my great blessings and advantage in my life,” Charles said in 2019.
The couple put down roots in Wichita, raised two children, Elizabeth and Chase, and have welcomed three grandchildren. Prior to becoming a father, Charles conceded in a 2017 video, he had “mixed emotions.” He worried what kind of father he would be, but when Elizabeth was born, he was overjoyed. According to his wife Liz, Charles was an “instant” parent who “never looked back.”
In raising his children, Charles worked to help his children transform their lives using the principles that have transformed his own. Every Sunday, he held a teaching session centered on principles. He emphasized the importance of recognizing and nurturing their unique talents, encouraging them through a process of trial and error. While they admire his big ideas, vision and philosophy, it is his humor and joyful celebration of the absurd they love most. His children maintain a strong bond with their parents and credit this upbringing with giving them the confidence to forge their own distinct paths in life.
Chase is Executive Vice President for Origination and Partnerships at Koch, and the founder of Koch Disruptive Technologies, a venture capital firm partnering with principled entrepreneurs who are building transformative companies, and founder of Stand Together Ventures and Stand Together Music. Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of several organizations, including Unlikely Collaborators, Catapult Publishing and Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, each of which blend science, self-investigation and storytelling.
Shortly after Charles was born, Fred Koch wrote a letter to his sons. He was worried that the insurance policies he had purchased to pay for their education might hurt more than help. The policies and letter sat in a safety deposit box, unopened until Fred’s passing in 1967.
“If you choose to let this money destroy your initiative and independence then it will be a curse to you and my action in giving it to you will have been a mistake,” Fred wrote. “I should regret very much to have you miss the glorious feeling of accomplishment and I know you are not going to let me down.”
Charles reflected on that note decades later in his book Good Profit: “The greatest gift we can receive or pass on is the opportunity to find and pursue our passion, and in doing so, to make a difference by helping others improve their lives. My hope is that everyone will have the opportunity to experience the glorious feeling of accomplishment.”