This is what happens to Doug Pitt (58), who has rightfully earned a social standing separate from the celebrity status of his brother Brad Pitt (61). On more than one occasion, he has confessed in interviews that "at least three times a week people mistake me for my brother on the street."
Unlike many relatives who often ride the wave of fame, money, and glamour, Doug chose to take a different path. After graduating in Economics from Southwest Missouri State University, in 1991 at just 25 years old, he founded ServiceWorld Computer, a provider of information technology services and IT solutions. He sold it in 2013 for a fortune to then create Pitt Development Group, which provided IT services to medical centers.
In 2018, he bought back his first company to merge it with Pitt Development Group, becoming a reference in the United States. With a great vision for the future, he continues to invest a large part of his earnings in real estate transactions in his home state of Missouri.
While in college, he met Lisa, whom he proposed to in a rather original way by making a plastic ring hidden in an Easter egg basket. Unlike the huge mansions his brother buys and sells, Doug lives in a two-story house in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Springfield, his hometown. The couple has three children, Landon (28), Sydney (27), and Reagan (26).
When at home, he loves to listen to 60s rock with headphones, in the kitchen, he enjoys making lasagna, and on top of that, he is also handy. Among the countless things he has done is a beautiful birdhouse that he spent several months on. While his children were teenagers, he was quite involved in their activities, even becoming the first base coach in his son's youth baseball league.
Besides being a successful businessman, Doug considers himself primarily a philanthropist involved in various causes. While for much of his life he tried to distance himself from Brad's long shadow, at one point he decided to benevolently take advantage of it with the hope of raising funds for Care to Learn, a program founded by Doug in 2008 that provides resources related to health, hunger, and hygiene to students in school districts in Missouri so they can worry less and play more.
He is also the director of WorldServer International, a global group for economic development and water sanitation; he leads Africa 6000, named after the 6,000 children who die daily from waterborne diseases, and in 2010, Jakaya Kikwete, the former President of the United Republic of Tanzania, appointed him Goodwill Ambassador of the country. Among the myriad of activities he organizes to raise funds for a common good is becoming the first American to bike down Kilimanjaro in 2011 with 44 participants. That initiative raised $750,000 to clean Tanzania's rivers. Due to his interest in social causes, Bill Clinton awarded him the Humanitarian Leadership Award in 2011.
Doug has a great sense of humor. Therefore, he didn't hesitate to take on the role of Detective David Mills - the role Brad played in the movie Seven - for a beer commercial for Mother's Brewing Company, and the most successful one with over five million views was the one he did for Virgin Mobile Australia where he introduced himself as "the second most famous Pitt in his family."
Brad and Doug have a younger sister named Julie, a homemaker who has found the necessary guidance in religion for her daily tasks and who, like the two aforementioned brothers, was raised in the faith of the Southern Baptist Convention. She is married to Rob Neal, with whom she has raised five children, Caleb, Rosie, and Rylie (twins), and Caden and Cruz, the last two adopted from Ethiopia. The three Pitt siblings donated one million dollars to St. John's Hospital in 2009 to establish a fund for pediatric cancer care named after their mother, Jane Etta (85).