A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Mississippi State University
George and Kathy Bishop pledged $100 million to the George Bishop Family Endowed Scholarship, which the couple established when they gave the university $10 million in 2018. The scholarship provides financial aid to students across all fields of study and seeks to expand opportunities to students who are often overlooked for substantial scholarships. The scholarship gives preference to Mississippi students.
George Bishop founded GeoSouthern Energy, an oil and gas producer in Woodlands, Tex., in 1981. Forbes estimates his net worth stands at about $3 billion. He earned a degree in petroleum geology from the university in 1958 and worked in the oil and gas industry in Louisiana before launching GeoSouthern.
Brown University
Ronald Perelman pledged $25 million through his Perelman Family Foundation to establish the Ronald O. Perelman Arts District, an effort to bring a greater sense of cohesiveness to the extensive performing- and visual- arts spaces across the university’s Providence, R.I., campus. The district will include the Lindemann Performing Arts Center, which is scheduled to open in the fall.
Perelman is chairman and CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes, a holding company in New York that owns the cosmetics giant Revlon and several other businesses. Perelman served on the Brown Corporation from 2013 to 2019 and has a son who graduated from Brown in 1990 and a daughter who graduated from the university in 2017.
Holyoke Community College
Margaret (Peg) and Gary Wendlandt pledged at least $10 million to support scholarships and other programs. The donation is a planned bequest so the college will receive the money upon the donors’ deaths.
Peg Wendlandt is a retired family-law attorney who worked earlier in her career as a teacher and as an actuarial assistant at MassMutual, an insurance company in Springfield, Mass. She graduated from the college, then called Holyoke Junior College, in 1958 and is the first of the college’s alumna to earn a law degree.
Gary Wendlandt retired in 2010 as vice chairman of the board and chief investment officer of New York Life Insurance Company. The couple are longtime donors to the community college and have given primarily to support scholarships and to match donations from other donors.
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Vijay and Marie Goradia gave $10 million through their Vijay and Marie Goradia Charitable Foundation to establish the Vijay and Marie Goradia Cancer Fund and accelerate translational research and clinical trials. Of the total, the donors designated $3.5 million for a special clinical trial for patients with renal cell carcinoma that was developed by Dr. Katy Rezvani, a physician and professor of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at the center.
Vijay Goradia founded Vinmar International, a global chemical trading company headquartered in Houston, and the Vinmar Group, Haverhill Chemicals, and Lion Copolymer. He also established Pratham USA, the U.S. fundraising arm of Pratham, a nonprofit that provides education to children living in poverty in Mumbai, India. He immigrated to the United States from India in the 1970s. Marie Goradia worked as a molecular biologist before devoting her time to philanthropy.
Purdue University
Norman and Karen Blake pledged $10 million to establish the Blake Family Center for Ethics within the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business. The gift will pay for a director position, a scholars program, curriculum development, and events, including an annual symposium.
Norman Blake is a former chairman and CEO of the Promus Hotel Corporation, a hotel chain that merged with Hilton in the late 1990s. He previously led USF&G, a property and casualty company, and Heller International, a holding company in Chicago.
He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Purdue in 1965 and 1966, respectively, and served briefly as CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2000. Karen Blake earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Purdue in 1965.
American University
Shahal Khan gave $5 million to establish the Shahal M. Khan Cyber and Economic Security Institute, which will offer training courses, guest-speaker lectures, and workshops in cyber-incident response, network security, and the protection of vital infrastructure.
Khan founded and leads Burkhan World Investments, a holding company in Washington, and is chairman of Trinity White City Ventures, a special-purpose entity connected to Burkhan. He is also a majority owner of the Plaza Hotel, a historic hotel in New York. Khan earned a bachelor’s degree from the university’s School of International Studies in 1995.
California State University at Chico
Jon Krabbenschmidt gave $5 million to construct a building to house the College of Business. The donor is a real-estate investor. He retired in 2020 as a partner at Novogradac & Company, an accounting and consulting firm in San Francisco. Earlier in his career he served as executive vice president of Sierra Capital Companies and worked in the tax department at Arthur Andersen. He graduated from the university in 1976.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
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