A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Weill Cornell Medicine
Sanford and Joan Weill gave $50 million through their Weill Family Foundation to establish the Weill Cancer Hub East, a program that will bring together experts from four research institutions — Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Princeton University, Rockefeller University, and Weill Cornell Medicine — to investigate how nutrition and metabolism impact the body’s ability to control cancer and to advance immunotherapy treatments for cancer patients.
Sanford Weill is a billionaire financier who led the banking giant Citigroup from 1998 to 2006 and served as president of American Express in the 1980s. He started his career in the 1950s working for the now shuttered investment bank Bear Stearns. He later co-founded the Shearson Loeb Rhoades brokerage firm and eventually sold it to American Express for roughly $900 million in 1981.
This isn’t the first big research effort the couple have started. In 2019, they awarded a $106 million grant to establish Weill Neurohub, an organization that brings together researchers and clinicians from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Francisco, and the University of Washington, to develop new treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases. They also established the Weill Institute for Neurosciences with a $185 million grant to the University of California at San Francisco in 2016. The couple have given significant sums to charity over the years and have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors eight times since 2001.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
Penelope Steiner pledged an unrestricted $25 million that opera company officials said in a news release will in part support plans to increase its artistic offerings, audience development programs, and community outreach efforts in the coming years.
Steiner is vice chair of the opera’s Board of Directors and a longtime donor to arts and culture groups in Chicago, her hometown. She fell in love with opera during her college years when she spent a year at Loyola University in Rome. Steiner serves as president of the Robert and Penelope Steiner Foundation, the grant maker she founded with her late husband Robert Steiner, a Chicago businessman and investor who died in 2020.
University of Southern California Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute
Massoud and Ferial Arvanaghi gave $15 million to support research aimed at developing new sustainable energy storage solutions by establishing three endowed funds to back graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
The couple are chemists, and together they lead Qualimax LLC, an analytical and microbial testing laboratory in Ridgefield, N.J., that Ferial Arvanaghi founded in 2002. Ferial serves as managing director and Massoud as scientific director.
Massoud Arvanaghi earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from USC in 1982 and conducted research at the Loker Institute during his graduate school years and later as a postdoctoral fellow. He went on to work as a chemist for several companies before landing at a small manufacturer of nutritional supplements, food flavorings, and food coloring agents in 1990.
After earning a master’s degree from the University of Akron in 1986, Ferial Arvanaghi worked for several fertilizer, pharmaceutical, and personal care products companies, and spent 15 years of her career working for the multinational food packaging company Unilever in its research and development department.
The couple bought the small food company where Massoud worked in 1994 and grew the business before selling it to International Flavors & Fragrances in 2016.
Naples Comprehensive Health
Jay and Patty Baker gave this Naples, Fla., health-care system $10 million to help build the RM Schulze Family Heart and Stroke Critical Care Center, which when completed will integrate complex and specialized patient care under one roof.
Jay Baker served as president of the national retail chain Kohl’s Department Stores before retiring in 2000. He started his career at Saks Fifth Avenue and later served in executive positions there and with British American Tobacco in the United States. In 1986, he partnered with two other investors to buy Kohl’s, and the three men took the company public in 1992. Patty Baker is a Broadway producer who has earned two Tony Awards for “Memphis: The Musical” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
San Diego Natural History Museum
Irwin Jacobs gave $10 million to establish the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Science and Conservation, through which the museum will expand its research and training programs; develop collaborations with other academic, research, and conservation organizations; and boost the museum’s ability to incorporate the use of advanced technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence into its research and environmental-conservation efforts.
Irwin Jacobs is an engineer who co-founded the wireless technology giant Qualcomm in 1985. He was a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California at San Diego from 1966 to 1972, and during that time he co-founded the Linkabit Corporation, which developed a satellite-encryption device.
His late wife, Joan Jacobs, was a school dietician early in her career and later led the couple’s philanthropy. She died last year at 91. The Jacobs have given huge sums to San Diego-area nonprofits. They have appeared on the Chronicle‘s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 19 times since 2002 and have given more than $1.8 billion to charity during that time period.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
