Highlighted Philanthropists
Veronica Atkins
Atkins is one of the top fifty most generous philanthropists. Newsweek also proclaimed her part of the “All-Star Team" in philanthropy.
Naveen Jain
Jain has been named one of the Top 20 Entrepreneurs by Red Herring, recognized for winning the Albert Einstein Technology Medal Winner, and received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2007.
George Soros
The Soros Foundations are an international network of local, Soros-founded foundations promoting sociopolitical activities.
Kenneth Langone
In 1978, he partnered with Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank to found Home Depot, which today is one of the largest and most successful chains in the home improvement industry. He has contributed almost $150 million dollars to various charities.
Alfred Mann
Alfred E. Mann was born in Portland, Oregon in 1925, and moved to California in 1946 where he has resided until present. As an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, Alfred Mann ranked No.390 in Forbes Magazine’s list of The World’s Richest People in 2007 and No.12 on the list of most generous donors of the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2004.
As a biotech entrepreneur, Alfred Mann founded more than a dozen aerospace and biomedical companies and is responsible for some of the world’s greatest medical advances. Among his companies are Minimed Inc., manufacturing insulin pumps, Pacesetter Inc., which manufactures pacemakers, Second Sight making prosthetic retinas, Advanced Bionics that devotes to neuro-stimulators, and Mannkind Corporation, which is a biopharmaceutical company that is concerned with research and development of therapeutic products for diseases like diabetes and cancer. Mannkind pioneered the development of inhaled insulin.
- In 1985, Alfred Mann established the Alfred Mann Foundation, which conducts scientific studies and medical research, and takes charge in the selection, creation, and supervision of institutes in different universities.
- In 1987, Alfred Man established the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at University of Southern California where he donated a total of $162 million. The institute aims to transform scientific biomedical researches into practical products and to license the technology, and produce yearly royalties of $5 million - $10 million, where the money will be invested back into the institutes for supplementary research and product development.
- On March 16, 2007, the Alfred Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering donated $100 million to Purdue University, which was used to create the Alfred Mann Institute at Purdue University.
- He also donated $104 million to Technion and $100 million to the University of California at Los Angeles to establish similar institutes.