A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
LaGuardia Community College
Alexandra and Steven Cohen gave $116.2 million through their Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation to create the Cohen Career Collective. The new center will help students at the community college prepare for careers in high-demand industries in New York City, including construction, film and television, health care, restaurants and hospitality, and green energy. It will also offer career coaching, interview preparation, job placement, child care, and financial-literacy training.
Steven Cohen is a hedge-fund manager who founded SAC Capital Advisors and Point72 Asset Management. Alexandra Cohen is the president of the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation. The couple also own the New York Mets professional baseball team, whose stadium is near the community college in Queens.
Courage and Civility Award
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, awarded no-strings-attached gifts of $50 million each to the Hollywood actress and producer Eva Longoria and retired Admiral Bill McRaven to direct to the charities of their choice.
They are the 2024 recipients of the Courage and Civility Award, a prize that Bezos began awarding three years ago to honor leaders who advance a spirit of unity in their philanthropic activities. Previous winners include the singer-songwriter Dolly Parton; Van Jones, a CNN political commentator and co-founder of Dream Corps; and José Andrés, a chef and founder of World Central Kitchen.
Longoria indicated she would give her share to the Eva Longoria Foundation, which she created to strengthen education and economic opportunities for Latinos in the United States.
McRaven, a retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral and former chancellor of the University of Texas System, said he would use the money to advance programs to protect democracy, offer mental-health support to military veterans, and aid the families of soldiers who have died in combat.
University of Maryland at College Park
Eugenia and Michael Brin, the parents of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have given $27.2 million through the Brin Family Foundation to enhance programs in the university’s math department.
Of the total, $25 million will endow the Brin Mathematics Research Center, which the couple established with a $4.75 million gift in 2021. An additional $2 million will create a new endowed chair in mathematics, and $200,000 will be used to test the Brin Maryland Mathematics Camp summer program for high-school students from the state.
The couple both taught at the university for years. Michael Brin is a professor emeritus of mathematics. Eugenia Brin is a retired research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Indiana University
The university has received $20 million from Julie Wood to develop new methods for the prevention, detection, and treatment of lung cancer and establish the Tom and Julie Wood Center for Lung Cancer Research within the Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center.
She directed $11 million to create a research fund to accelerate the development of lung-cancer treatments and therapies. Another $7 million will be used to recruit lung-cancer researchers and leaders for the Tom and Julie Wood Center for Lung Cancer Research. The remaining $2 million will support End Lung Cancer Now, a program that aims to strengthen tobacco education and cessation; increase participation in clinical trials; aid people who currently have lung cancer; and expand screening for the disease.
The donor’s late husband, Tom Wood, was an Indianapolis auto executive who died from lung cancer in 2010.
New York University Langone Health
Wayne and Wendy Holman have given $15 million to endow the newly renamed Holman Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism and advance research, clinical trials, academic forums, and treatments of endocrine disorders.
Wendy Holman is a former investment manager who leads Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, a Miami biotechnology company the couple founded in 2015. In 2019, she was named to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, which counsels the White House and the U.S. secretary of health and human services on the U.S. government’s response to the AIDS epidemic. Wayne Holman is a physician who founded Ridgeback Capital, a hedge fund that invests in pharmaceutical businesses. He earned his medical degree from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and serves on NYU Langone’s Board of Trustees.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Stephen Israel has pledged $10 million to endow the O.B. Hardison Scholarship, which will go to undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences who are majoring in the humanities. Eligible students must have chosen to major in art history, classical archaeology, classics, comparative literature, English, history, musicology, philosophy, or religious studies.
Israel graduated from the university in 1966 with a degree in English. He originally intended to major in business, but changed the focus of his studies after taking a class from the late O.B. Hardison, an English professor and Renaissance scholar who later became director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, D.C.
Israel retired as vice chairman of the consulting firm Korn Ferry.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
