A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation
Ross Stevens pledged $100 million to establish the Stevens Financial Security Award, which will provide financial security for Team USA athletes after they compete in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The awards will go to athletes representing the United States at the 2026 Olympics and Paralympics and continue through at least the 2032 games.
The award is designed to provide every U.S. Olympian and Paralympian with $200,000 for each Olympic Games in which they compete. Eligible athletes will receive $100,000 of the award 20 years after their qualifying games or at 45 years of age, whichever is later, and another $100,000 will go to their families or chosen beneficiaries when they die. Athletes who earn more than $1 million a year will not be eligible for the award.
Stevens founded and leads Stone Ridge Holdings Group, an alternative asset-management firm in New York that invests in reinsurance and Bitcoin. He started his career at Goldman Sachs.
Stevens appeared on the Chronicle’s 2023 Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors for a $100 million donation to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1996. He attracted attention that year for rescinding a $100 million pledge he announced in 2017 to his other alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, after then-UPenn president Liz Magill’s testimony during a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.
Fordham University
Maurice Cunniffe, and his wife, Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe, gave $100 million to support the construction of a new science building on the university’s Rose Hill campus and to launch new and expand existing STEM degree programs. Maurice Cunniffe is a Fordham alumnus going back to his high school days. He graduated from Fordham Prep in 1950, and then earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Fordham University in 1954. He went on to have a varied career.
He owned American Optical Corporation, a manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses, safety products, contact lenses, and specialty products for the U.S. government, and he served as chairman and CEO of Vista Capital Corporation, an equipment financing and leasing company. He was chief engineer at Sperry Gyroscope, a now-shuttered aviation-equipment and electronics company; a partner at the investment firm A.G. Becker; and he worked as a consultant for McKinsey and Company.
Carolyn Dursi Cunniffe is a former corporate executive. She served as vice president of the cosmetics giant Revlon, and later in the same role at the fashion and beauty company Chanel. She also served as senior vice president at Cablevision, a cable television company that shut down in 2016. She is also a Fordham alumna. She earned a masters degree and a Ph.D. at the university in French literature in 1971.
Vanderbilt University College of Connected Computing
Houston philanthropists John and Laura Arnold pledged $25 million to establish and endow a chair for the college’s dean and three professorships in the college, and support a range of computing-education programs and research efforts in the college.
The Arnolds are prolific Houston philanthropists who founded and lead Arnold Ventures, a limited-liability company that includes their foundation and donor-advised fund, and a 501(c)(4) organization that allows them to support lobbying and advocacy work.
Their charitable giving spans a range of causes including education, efforts to reduce health-care costs, and programs aimed at overhauling the criminal-justice system. Their advocacy work includes promoting bipartisan policy reforms to solve society’s biggest problems. They first appeared on the Chronicle’s 2011 Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors, and have landed a spot on the annual list every year since then.
John Arnold is the retired founder of Centaurus, a hedge fund in Houston that he started in 2002, and a co-founder of Grid United, a company that develops high-voltage transmission projects to make the U.S. power grid more reliable, resilient, and efficient. He is a Vanderbilt trustee and earned a bachelor’s degree from the university in 1996. He started his career as an analyst at the oil and gas giant Enron, and later oversaw the company’s trading of natural gas derivatives. Laura Arnold is a former attorney and oil company executive.
University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
John Nau III gave $20 million personally and through his John L. Nau III Foundation to back graduate programs and endow support for 30 graduate students. The university has matched the gift with $10 million.
Nau is Chairman and CEO of Silver Eagle Beverages, a beverage distributor in San Antonio. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the 1960s before enrolling in the university and earned a bachelor’s degree in history there in 1968. He serves on the University of Virginia Board of Visitors.
Cornell Tech
Thomas Secunda pledged $10.5 million over five years to support artificial intelligence-related research at Cornell Tech, in New York, N.Y., and at the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science in Ithaca, N.Y.
The money will create the Cornell Empire AI Postdoctoral Fellowship Program Fund and pay for an annual public conference at Cornell Tech that showcases work by Cornell fellows and faculty involved with the Empire AI Consortium, an effort to develop and promote responsible AI tools aimed at creating jobs and improving the lives of New York state residents.
Secunda co-founded and is vice chairman of Bloomberg L.P., where he was involved in the creation of the Bloomberg Terminal, a technology platform that provides financial professionals with news, data and analytics.
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business
Andrew Tavakoli gave $10 million to launch the Andrew Tavakoli Center for Real Estate and establish a real estate chair, an endowed scholarship, and a fund to match gifts to the center from other donors. Tavakoli leads Tavaco Properties, a commercial real estate investment company in West Hollywood, Calif. He earned an M.B.A. from the business school in 1986.
University of Memphis Athletics
Gary and Barbara Bryant pledged $7 million through the Gary W. and Barbara Bryant Family Trusts and gave $500,000 outright to support the Gary W. and Barbara Bryant Athletic Excellence Fund, which they established with a $13 million gift in 2019 to support student athletes.
Gary Bryant has led several life- and health-insurance companies in the Orlando, Fla., area. He is a former CEO of Marquette National Life Insurance Company and of Disabled Veterans Insurance Careers, a nonprofit in Fort Myers, Fla. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the university in 1972. He started his career as an accountant.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
