The Slatest

Mini-Explainer: Who Is Darla Moore, Augusta’s Other New Female Member?

The Augusta National Golf Club announced Monday that its members are finally ready to allow women into what had been an all-male club for the past eight decades. The board’s picks for the first women to formally don the club’s iconic green jacket: Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore.

We’re guessing you’ve got a rather good handle on exactly who Rice is. (Hint: She’s the former secretary of state.) However, you’re probably not as familiar with Moore, a South Carolina financier who is the vice president of Rainwater, Inc., a private investment firm founded by her husband, Richard Rainwater, an American investor worth about $2.3 billion by Forbes magazine’s latest count.

According to the University of South Carolina, where Moore graduated from and where the business school bears her name, she is also the founder and chair of the Palmetto Institute, which describes itself as a nonprofit think tank aimed at boosting the per capita income of South Carolina residents. She’s also served on the boards of USC and the New York University Medical School and Hospital and was named to Fortune’s list of the top 50 “most powerful” American businesswomen.

Her husband is now mentally incapacitated, struggling with progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease that Forbes explains is often mistaken for Parkinson’s disease, and strikes just six in every 100,000 people. His family is now funding research into a cure for the disease. CNN Money has that story here.