22 Immigrant Philanthropists to Watch

These are some of the best-known big donors born outside the United States who are helping to shape American philanthropy.

Philanthropy’s New Citizens

One out of every seven Americans was born outside the United States. Among those immigrants are a number of big donors who have become an important yet overlooked force in charitable giving.

• ‘I Have No Choice': An Iranian-American Focuses Her Philanthropy on Helping Immigrants
• Immigrants Are an Often Overlooked Force in Giving

Michele Chan and Patrick Soon-Shiong (both born in South Africa, raised by Chinese parents): The two, who grew up during apartheid, say the disparities they saw in that era drive their efforts to improve access to American health care. “What was unconscionable to us in South Africa in the 20th century is just as unconscionable in the United States in the 21st,” they wrote in their 2010 letter signing on to the Giving Pledge.

Carlos Alvarez (Mexico): He helped bring Corona beer from his home country to the United States, then started his own business, Gambrinus, which produces craft brews such as Shiner. He recently gave Davidson College $8.4 million to support international students.

Pierre Omidyar (France): With his wife, Pam, the eBay founder has landed on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of big donors nearly every year since 2002. Through traditional charitable giving and for-profit investments, they work globally to end human trafficking, mass atrocities, and conflict as well as to promote civic engagement, financial inclusion, and emerging technology.

Manoj Bhargava (India): Much of the philanthropy of the creator of the 5-Hour Energy Drink is focused on Billions in Change — what he calls a “zero profit” effort to develop products and tools to improve water supplies, electricity, and health care in impoverished parts of the world.

Elon Musk (South Africa): The PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX entrepreneur says his inventions will help solve global problems, but he’s also active in science and engineering education and post-disaster work that brought solar energy to Puerto Rico (Hurricane Maria), the Gulf Coast (Katrina), and Japan (2011 tsunami).

JOSHUA BRIGHT/NEW YORK TIMES

George Soros (Hungary): The liberal political activist, billionaire investor, and megaphilanthropist (his Open Society Foundations has assets of about $18 billion) makes a point of investing in start-ups, businesses, and social enterprises run by migrants and refugees.

Rafat and Zoreen Ansari (Pakistan): The Indiana couple, who both are physicians and Muslims, gave $15 million to Notre Dame to help the Catholic university start a center for the study of global religions.

Nicolas Berggruen (Germany): The son of an art collector and dealer, he’s a patron of various museums. He’s perhaps best known for the eponymous think tank he began in 2010 (and reportedly endowed with $1 billion) to develop ideas to shape political, social, and economic institutions.

José Andrés (Spain): The celebrity chef founded a nonprofit after the 2010 Haitian earthquake that has done relief work globally — notably in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Lucy Schaeffer/Wikimedia Commons

Kieu Hoang (Vietnam): The billionaire came to the United States after serving as an interpreter for American forces during the Vietnam War. The founder of two blood-products companies, he also runs a California winery and other businesses. Last year, he gave $5 million each to relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey and the San Jose, Calif., floods. “I come here to thank the American people who allowed us to come to this country as a refugee in early 1975,” he said in Houston.

Hamdi Ulukaya (Turkey): Born to a Kurdish dairy-farming family, he founded the Chobani yogurt empire with a federal small-business loan and has lived what he describes as the American dream. He has pledged the majority of his wealth to help refugees.

Steven Udvar-Házy (Hungary): After fleeing Soviet occupation of his native country, he attended the University of California at Los Angeles and became a billionaire in the airplane-leasing industry. His $66 million gift to the Smithsonian was the anchor of its Air and Space Museum extension.

Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo): The former NBA star is now a globe-trotting philanthropist, focused mostly on health and education in his home country.

Jan Koum (Ukraine): The giving of the co-founder of WhatsApp is a bit mysterious, but he’s put hundreds of millions into donor-advised funds with Goldman Sachs and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Jorge Pérez (Argentina, raised by Cuban parents): An activist while in college in the 1960s, the real-estate billionaire is now a patron of Miami arts and culture. With his $40 million donation of art and cash in 2011, the city’s contemporary-art museum was named after him.

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Bita Daryabari (Iran): The former telecom executive and ex-wife of Silicon Valley executive Omid Kordestani founded the Pars Equality Center, which offers social and legal services to Iranian-Americans. Among her other philanthropic interests, she backs women’s causes, medical research, and the XPrize Foundation.

Jan and Marica Vilcek (former Czechoslovakia): They fled their Communist-controlled homeland in the 1960s. Their foundation promotes immigrant contributions to the United States, notably through $1 million prizes to artists and scientists. An immunologist, he’s the co-inventor of the anti-inflammatory drug Remicade; she’s an art historian who worked for many years at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Oscar Tang (China): The retired New York financier has donated at least $100 million in his lifetime. Two of his signature gifts: $50 million to Phillips Academy Andover, his alma mater, and $30 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Theresia Gouw (Indonesia): Considered one of the most influential women in technology venture capital, she’s a co-founder of All Raise, a nonprofit that supports and promotes female founders and investors. A graduate of Brown University, she joined with fellow alum and Silicon Valley investor Charles Giancarlo to donate $35 million to help launch a capital campaign for its engineering school.

Diane von Furstenberg (Belgium): An acclaimed fashion designer, she runs a family foundation with her husband, media titan Barry Diller. The array of organizations and causes she backs includes women entrepreneurs and such New York projects as High Line park and a new Statue of Liberty museum.

Sergey Brin (Russia): The Google co-founder, generally ranked among the world’s richest people, has an eclectic range of philanthropic interests. Through the foundation he formed with his ex-wife, Anne Wojcicki, he’s donated millions to cure Parkinson’s disease and fight poverty in Northern California, among other things.

Jerry Yang (Taiwan) and Akiko Yamazaki (Costa Rica, raised by Japanese parents): He’s a Yahoo cofounder. Their signature public gifts: $75 million to Stanford, their alma mater, and $25 million to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum, whose board Yamazaki chairs.

Note: These philanthropists live and do business in the United States, though they may not all be American citizens.