Steve Sarowitz

Origins and early life

Steve Sarowitz was born in the United States in 1965 or 1966 and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in economics. He was raised Jewish, and it was at the Jewish student center of his university that he first heard of the Bahá'í Faith, which he began to study many years later and joined in February 2015; he has since spoken about that faith in many countries.

Work and career

After working for several payroll companies, he founded his own payroll firm in Illinois in 1997 under the name Ameripay Payroll, and the business took the name Paylocity in December 2005. Paylocity built cloud-based payroll and human capital management software for employers, and its headquarters moved from Franklin Park to Elk Grove Village, then to Arlington Heights and finally to Schaumburg, in the Chicago suburbs.

The company went public on the Nasdaq exchange in March 2014, and Sarowitz, its founder and chairman, also led the international payroll provider Blue Marble and served as a director of the British payroll firm Payescape. Three days after he became a Bahá'í, a friend suggested that he make a film about his new faith, and he began a second career in cinema, helping to fund and promote the documentaries “He Named Me Malala” and “Rosenwald”.

Recognition

He was executive producer of the award-winning documentary “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” and of “The Gate: Dawn of the Bahá'í Faith”, a film about the founding of that religion. With his wife Jessica he set up the Julian Grace Foundation, a family foundation that supports more than fifty causes around the world, among them programmes for orphans, foster children and refugees. A keen runner and a member of the Chicago Area Runners Association Hall of Fame, he lives in Highland Park, Illinois, and has often served as a guide at the Bahá'í House of Worship in nearby Wilmette.