A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
California Science Center
Kent Kresa gave $25 million through the Kresa Family Foundation to support the construction of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, a new building that will house and display artifacts, aircraft, and spacecraft. The center will also use the gift to create and operate educational programs and interactive and other exhibits. When completed, the Oschin Center will include a 20-story tower for the display of space-shuttle engines, rocket boosters, and other components — as well as the now-retired Orbiter Endeavour, the last operational space shuttle NASA built. Center officials plan to name one of the Oschin Center’s three exhibition galleries for Kresa.
Kresa served as chairman, president, and CEO of aerospace giant Northrup Grumman before retiring from the company in 2003. He began his career at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as Darpa, where he led research-and-development programs in tactical and strategic defense. Kresa later worked on ballistic-missile-defense research at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. He was credited with saving Northrup Grumman from demise in the late 1990s and later served as chairman of the automobile corporation General Motors.
University of Northern Iowa
David Wilson pledged $25 million to establish the Wilson Endowment for Integrity and Excellence, an effort to advance business-ethics education and ensure the university’s graduates succeed and become leaders in a rapidly changing business landscape. In recognition of Wilson’s donation, the university plans to name the business school the David W. Wilson College of Business.
Wilson founded Wilson Automotive in the 1980s. The company is headquartered in Tustin, Calif., and operates 18 dealerships in the Southwest and Mexico. Wilson grew up on a farm in Traer, Iowa. The oldest of five siblings, he worked at a car dealership to pay his way through college and graduated from the university in 1970.
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
Mike and Sofia Segal gave $17 million through their Mike and Sofia Segal Family Foundation to advance the treatment of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, a rare type of blood cancer that in most cases cannot be cured.
Mike Segal founded and leads LS Power, a New York power-plant investor, developer, and manager, that also invests in businesses focused on energy transition including electric vehicle charging, demand response, microgrids, renewable fuels, and waste-to-energy platforms.
The Segals emigrated to the United States in 1978 from present-day Ukraine with $120, two suitcases, and a toddler in tow, and became U.S. citizens later that year. Mike Segal started his career working for the former Soviet Union’s department of energy and later served as a consulting engineer to electric utilities, municipalities, and electric cooperatives throughout the United States. He helped to lead investments and power-generation projects for other power companies before founding his company in 1990.
Rebuilding Together
MacKenzie Scott gave $9 million to this affordable-housing nonprofit that repairs homes. The gift is unrestricted; and the organization’s officials said in a news release that they intend to use the money to expand the nonprofit’s work throughout the United States. The organization repairs homes in primarily underserved or financially struggling neighborhoods to ensure they’re clean, dry, free of pests and contaminants, well ventilated and maintained, and thermally controlled so that families have a safe and healthy place to live.
Scott is a novelist who has given more than $14 billion to more than 1,600 nonprofits over the last three years. Her estimated $34 billion fortune comes from stock she holds in the online retailing giant Amazon, which she helped to found with her former husband Jeff Bezos nearly 30 years ago.
Louisiana State University Health New Orleans Foundation
Billy and Marcia Beer left $7.5 million, the bulk of their estate, to endow full-tuition scholarships at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine so that qualified students who would otherwise be unable to afford medical school can become physicians. The couple established the Marcia and Billy Beer Endowed Scholarship Fund in 2003 to award as many full four-year scholarships to medical-school students as the yearly interest from the endowed fund would allow.
The Beers included an interesting stipulation in their gift agreement that says: “upon completion of their medical school and residency training and upon the beginning of their medical practice that each scholarship recipient demonstrates an appreciation of their gift by offering, when practical, one day of free medical care each month to a patient unable to afford care.”
Billy Beer spent his career in finance. He attended LSU and served in the U.S. Navy for three years. When he was 25, he contracted polio and received treatment at LSU medical school, which then had a polio unit, for more than a year. He spent six months of that time in an iron lung. He was later sent to Roosevelt Warm Springs, Ga., a rehabilitation center founded by President Franklin Roosevelt, who contracted polio when he was 39, in 1927. Billy Beer died in 2015 at 84.
Marcia Beer was an investor and banker. She started her career as a stock broker, becoming the first female licensed registered principal, someone authorized to hold a management post in a securities or investment firm, in Alabama. She later held executive positions at several banks and retired as executive vice president of First Commerce Corporation/First National Bank of Commerce in New Orleans. She died in 2022 at 80.
Tulane University A. B. Freeman School of Business
Gina and Todd Schwartz gave $5 million to renovate a space that will become the Schwartz Family Center for Experiential Business Learning. The gift will also support programs where students will get hands-on experience at corporations and learn to perform market analysis, determine the feasibility of launching new products, pursue investment strategies, and other skills.
Todd Schwartz is a partner at Strand Equity, a private-equity firm in Los Angeles, and at Schwartz Capital Group, an investment firm in Chicago. He also founded and leads OppFi, an online lending company that serves low-income customers. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the university in 2003.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
