Silicon Valley enterprise capitalist John Doerr, an early investor in Google, Amazon and different main tech corporations, and his spouse, Ann, have agreed to donate $1.1 billion to Stanford College to arrange a brand new college dedicated to the examine of local weather change and its options.
The reward, introduced Wednesday, is the biggest in Stanford historical past. It ranks because the second largest donation to any college in American historical past, behind $1.8 billion that former New York Metropolis Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins College, in 2018.
The college is predicted to propel Stanford, which already has appreciable services researching vitality and the surroundings, to the forefront of local weather analysis among the many world’s universities. It will likely be known as the Stanford Doerr College of Sustainability.
“Stanford is making a daring, actionable, and enduring dedication to sort out humanity’s biggest problem, and we've deep conviction in its ambition and skills,” mentioned John and Ann Doerr in an announcement.
Doerr, 70, of Woodside, was listed because the 146th richest particular person on the earth within the Forbes 2022 listing of wealthiest individuals, with a web value of $12.7 billion. A St. Louis native, he earned levels in electrical engineering from Rice College then a Harvard MBA within the Nineteen Seventies. He got here to the Bay Space with no job, then was employed by Intel in 1974, working as a salesman and acquiring a number of patents for reminiscence gadgets.
He left in 1980 to hitch Kleiner Perkins, a enterprise capital agency on Sand Hill Street in Menlo Park. Since then, he rose to change into chairman, serving to lead early investments into corporations like Google, Amazon, Solar Microsystems, Compaq, Netscape, DoorDash and Slack.
Ann Doerr is chair of Khan Academy, a non-profit instructional group based mostly in Mountain View that gives video classes on math and different topics. She is also a former board member and present advisory board member of the Environmental Protection Fund, and former trustee of Rice College.
Along with the Doerr’s reward, Stanford additionally acquired a staggering $590 million for the brand new local weather college from different donors, lots of them tech titans. Amongst them are billionaire Jerry Yang, the previous CEO of Yahoo! and his spouse Akiko Yamazaki; together with David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo! and his spouse, Angela; the William and Flora Hewlett Basis, and Susan Orr, daughter of Hewlett Packard co-founder David Packard, and her husband Lynn Orr, a professor of engineering emeritus at Stanford.
The college’s educational departments will launch subsequent 12 months with about 90 present college members from Stanford. The college will add 60 college extra over the subsequent 10 years, hiring specialists in vitality, local weather science, sustainable growth and environmental justice.
Its dean can be Arun Majumdar, who presently works at Stanford as a professor of mechanical engineering and supplies science. Majumdar is a former vp for vitality at Google, and served as undersecretary for vitality within the Obama Administration.
“The Stanford Doerr College of Sustainability won't solely harness the mental horsepower of our college students, college, and employees throughout our campus,” Majumdar mentioned, “but in addition associate with exterior organizations all over the world to co-develop revolutionary options and establish new insights via analysis and training. As is commonly mentioned, we don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our youngsters. We should create a future by which people and nature thrive collectively.”