100 richest people: Meet the 10 richest Americans

The 100 richest people in the world gained $241 billion in net worth last year, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. Americans dominated the list, occupying five of the top 10 spots. This countdown of the top 10 wealthiest Americans features a casino mogul, software tycoons, and a lot of Wal-Mart money. 

3. Charles Koch (tie)

Net worth: $41.3 billion

Wealth source: Koch Industries

Residence: Wichita, Kan.

World ranking Tied for 6th

 

The elder Koch brother is the CEO of Koch industries and, like his brother David, owns a 42 percent share in the company. The siblings have expanded dramatically the business they inherited from their father, Fred. Originally involved mainly in oil refining, Koch Industries is involved in a wide variety of ventures, including pollution control, minerals, and ranching. 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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