Women’s Olympic Rugby Team and Women Athletes Score Big Gifts

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Financier and sports team owner Michele Kang gave $50 million to launch the Kynisca Innovation Hub, a nonprofit focused on advancing training methods for women athletes. The nonprofit will bring together scientists, engineers, and others who will develop and share evidence-based, tailored training methods and education for coaches and the women athletes they train.

Kang also pledged $4 millionover four years to support the players and coaching staff of the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team as it prepares for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. On July 30, the team won the first Olympic medal for the United States across both the men’s and women’s rugby sevens competitions at this year’s Paris Olympics. Kang announced her donation in the hours after the team won the bronze medal.

Kang founded and leads Cognosante, a medical-technology company, and Cognosante Ventures, a venture capital firm. She owns three professional women’s soccer teams: the Washington Spirit, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin, and London City Lionesses, and recently launched Kynisca Sports International, which will invest in expanding women’s soccer. She also is a part owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

Kang attended Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, and then, encouraged by her father to pursue business, came to the United States, where she earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Chicago and a master’s degree at Yale School of Management. She started her career at the accounting giant Ernst & Young and then joined Northrop Grumman in 2000 as a senior executive.

Jerome Frautschi pledged $10 million through his W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation for endowment and to support upkeep of the Madison, Wisc., performing arts center. Frautschi has a decades-long and deep connection to the organization: He gave $205 million in the late 1990s to build the Overture Center, which opened in 2004 and is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Frautschi ran Webcrafters, a book-manufacturing company that he led with his brother, John, for 42 years. The brothers sold the business to the CJK Group, a printing company in Brainerd, Minn., in 2017. Frautschi served in the U.S. Naval Reserves during the Korean War and then started his career at his father’s printing company, Democrat Printing, which he and his brother later expanded to become Webcrafters.

E. Pierce Marshall Jr. and his family gave $10 million through their Marshall Heritage Foundation and Marshall Legacy Foundation to support the School of Medicine. Half of the donation, $5 million, will pay for the renovation of the seventh floor of the medical school’s Hutchinson Memorial Building, including the construction of the E. Pierce Marshall Memorial Laboratories for cancer research, named for the donor’s father, who died in 2006 of complications from leukemia.

Of the remaining total, $3 million will be used to establish the E. Pierce Marshall Memorial Chair, a faculty post focused on cancer research, and $2 million will create the E. Pierce Marshall Memorial Research Endowed Fund to support cancer research.

E. Pierce Marshall Jr. is president and CEO of Élevage Capital Management, a Dallas investment firm. He graduated from Tulane’s A. B. Freeman School of Business with a bachelor’s degree in management in 1990 and serves on the university’s Board of Trustees. His father was an oil industry executive who at one time held an ownership stake in the conglomerate Koch Industries, which he inherited from his father, J. Howard Marshall II. The latter man’s multibillion-dollar estate was the subject of court battles that lasted for many years.

Steve Grossman pledged $10 million through his Grossman Family Foundation to establish the Grossman Catalyst Fund, which will provide seed funding for creative new ocean science research and technology programs, especially those that do not usually attract government grants. The grant program is designed to advance new ideas and position them for additional federal or philanthropic support.

Grossman plans to pay $5 million of the donation over the next two years, and the remaining $5 million as a dollar-for-dollar match as the organization secures support for a companion fund that will back the same research and technology programs. The goal is to bring the programs far enough along to show promise and attract additional support from federal agencies, foundations, and philanthropists.

Grossman is a former CEO of the Southern Container Company, a manufacturer of corrugated boxes, graphics packaging, and containerboard. The company was founded in 1946 by his father, Louis Grossman, and his uncle Charles Grossman. Steven Grossman joined the company in 1962 and sold it to RockTenn in 2008 for $1.06 billion.

Jane Nord pledged $5 million to establish the Eric and Jane Nord Family Endowed Internship Fund, which will provide stipends to students who want to pursue otherwise unpaid or underpaid internships. The financial assistance will be open to student applicants from all degree fields and majors.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College in 1942, Nord received a certificate in art and design from Pratt in 1945 and taught classes there for three years. In 1976, she earned a master’s degree in art education from Case Western Reserve University. She is the widow of Eric Thomas Nord, who in 1954 co-founded the Nordson Corporation, which manufactures industrial adhesives. Eric Nord died in 2008 at 90.

Leon and Debra Black gave $5 million through their new grant maker, Black Family Philanthropies, to support the organization’s behavioral health employees. Of the total, $4 million will be used to support student debt relief for behavioral health staff in exchange for a three-year commitment to work for the health care organization. The remaining $1 million will back staff retention efforts.

Leon Black founded the private-equity firm Apollo Global Management in 1990. He stepped down from his leadership role there after the firm’s 2021 internal investigation revealed his financial ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein, a disgraced financier and sex offender. Debra Black is a Broadway producer. The Blacks have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors three times since 2012.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.