Few people have had the impact on Columbia Athletics that Andrew F. Barth has had as a student-athlete and beyond.
Born in Queens, Barth stayed home for college and was a mainstay on three Ivy League Championship wrestling teams from 1979-83. He was a team captain and All-Ivy League as a senior.
After graduation, he competed for the New York Athletic Club while earning his MBA from Columbia Business School, achieving state, regional and international honors in Greco-Roman wrestling.
Upon graduation from Columbia Business School in 1985, Barth moved to Los Angeles to begin work for The Capital Group, a global financial investment firm. Over two decades, Barth rose through several positions to become the Chairman of Capital Guardian Trust Company and Capital International Limited. Barth’s leadership was crucial to the growth of Capital Group from 25 billion dollars in assets in 1985 to 1.2 trillion dollars in assets in 2011.
Through it all, he remained loyal to Columbia and the sport of wrestling.
In 2005, he endowed the varsity head wrestling coaching position, now known as the Andrew F. Barth Head Coach of Wrestling. He and his wife, Avery, have also funded a scholarship in honor of his parents at the Columbia Business School and a scholarship in their name at Columbia College.
Barth’s dedication was recognized by U.S. Wrestling in 2016, being named the Team Leader for the United States Men’s Freestyle Wrestling Team for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He also played a role on the Committee to Preserve Olympic Wrestling (CPOW), which worked successfully in 2013 to keep wrestling in the Olympics.
Barth was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2012 and the EIWA Hall of Fame in 2013. He received USA Wrestling’s Man of the Year Award in 2014, the John Jay Award from Columbia University in 2011, the International Medical Corporation Global Humanitarian Award in 2011, the Golden Apple Award from the San Gabriel Valley Council of Academic Administrators in 2006 and the Jimmy Stewart Award from Scouting in 2004.
