A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
The billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman Ronda Stryker and her husband, William Johnston, gave $100 million to support a range of programs at the historically Black women’s college in Atlanta. Stryker and Johnston are directing $75 million to endow scholarships, and the remaining $25 million will be used to develop academic programs in public policy and democracy and to improve student housing.
Stryker is an heiress to the Stryker Corporation fortune, a medical-products company founded by her grandfather. She has served on the company’s Board of Directors since 1984 and is its largest individual shareholder. Johnston is chairman of Greenleaf Companies, a holding company for Greenleaf Trust, a wealth-management services firm in Michigan.
This isn’t the couple’s first donation to Spelman. In 2018, they gave the college $30 million to help build the Center for Innovation and the Arts, which when completed will house all of the college’s arts programs. Stryker has been a Spelman trustee since 1997.
City University of New York
James and Marilyn Simons gave$75 million through their Simons Foundation. They have earmarked $50 million to establish a center for computational science and $25 million to support the university’s participation in the Empire AI project, a New York state-sponsored partnership through which the state’s main research institutions are working together to create an artificial intelligence computing center focused on improving economic development throughout the state.
James Simons founded Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund. A respected mathematician, he worked as a code breaker for the National Security Agency in 1964 and as a researcher for the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses. He served as chairman of the mathematics department at State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 to 1978.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
K. Lisa Yang gave $28 million to launch the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center, where a multidisciplinary team of MIT researchers will work to assess important global challenges in three areas: climate-change mitigation and adaptation, global health, and the connections among water, energy, and food.
Yang is a former investment banker who advocates for individuals with disabilities and autism-spectrum disorders. Much of her giving in recent years has been focused on efforts to help people who are physically or cognitively disabled. Yang has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors for gifts she made in 2020 and in 2021.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Carl and Renée Behnke gave $15 million to support precision oncology research programs. The center’s officials plan to name South Lake Union House, an 80-unit building that offers affordable short-term housing to patients who travel to the medical center for care, for the Behnke family.
Carl Behnke is chairman of the Skinner Corporation, an investment firm founded by his family in 1916. He served as president of the ALPAC Corporation, a large Pepsi franchisee in Seattle, from 1978 to 1984. He started his career as an administrative assistant there in 1973 and later served as a vice president before leading the company.
The family has been involved with the cancer center for decades. Carl Behnke served as chairman of the center’s board and he spearheaded a capital campaign in the early 1990s. His late mother, Sally Skinner Behnke, also served as a board chair of the cancer center, and Renée Behnke has been a longtime fundraiser for the center. The couple’s daughters, Marisa and Merrill, and their spouses are members of the Innovators Network, the center’s organization for younger supporters.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
