Douglas Sperry Makepeace

Douglas Sperry Makepeace passed away peacefully at Shadyside Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the early hours of January 4, 2026. Douglas was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, on November 21, 1944 to Roger Sherman Makepeace and Elizabeth Appleton Douglas Makepeace. He attended St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire where he was a member of the barbershop quartet and chorus and joyfully participated in many dramatic productions. He received his BA in Psychology from Columbia University and a Master’s Degree from the Manhattan School of Music. At Columbia, Douglas was a proud member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. After graduating from Columbia, Douglas worked at IBM in London for five years before returning to New York to work as an account executive at Merrill Lynch and then at Bear, Stearns & Co. In 1988, Douglas founded Sperry Fund Management, focusing on hedge fund investing. His initial investors included some of the most prominent capital allocators of their time. By 2004, based on the 15-year record of the first fund, Sperry's assets under management grew to over $500 million. Douglas’s second career and long-term goal was to make education truly universal. In 2016, he co-founded LearnOnMobile, a language-learning app offering 1,400 interactive lessons for reading English. The app enables anyone with a mobile device and an internet connection to learn to read English better and faster. Music was Douglas’s lifelong passion. When a student at Columbia and at Manhattan School of Music, he sang in churches, including St. John the Divine and Saint Thomas, and in choral groups around the city. He was never shy about bursting into song and gladly sang a Bach cantata at his sister’s wedding. Douglas is survived by his wife, Mayra Makepeace, his son, Jonathan A. Makepeace, and stepdaughter Giselle Huron of New York City, and his sister, Anne A. Makepeace of Lakeville, CT. He will be sorely missed by his family and friends. The family requests no gifts; your love and support are more than enough.

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