Bezoses Pledge up to $500 Million to Unicef USA’s Child Nutrition Fund

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Unicef USA

Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos committed up to $500 million to the organization’s Child Nutrition Fund. The couple will match gifts from other donors to increase access to healthy, nutritious food for children and women in need around the world.

The challenge gift was announced during the Nutrition for Growth Summit, held in Paris last week, where the Bezoses joined major foundations to pledge more than $2 billion for childhood and maternal nutrition.

Jackie Bezos is the mother of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon. Mike Bezos, Jeff Bezos’s step-father, spent 32 years working as an engineer and manager with the oil and gas giant ExxonMobil.

Bowdoin College

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings gave $50 million to create the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity. The gift will enable the college to hire 10 new faculty members across a variety of disciplines, and help incorporate teaching about artificial intelligence in existing curricula, research, and artistic work. It will also expand workshops, events, and student research on AI and its applications into the future.

Hastings, who graduated from the private liberal-arts college in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in math, went on to start the company Pure Software before co-founding Netflix in 1997. He gave his alma mater $5 million in 2017 to establish its Thrive program, which offers aid and services for Bowdoin’s low-income and first-generation students.

Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, were No. 2 on this year’s Philanthropy 50 list of donors after giving away nearly $1.6 billion last year.

Allegheny College

Philip St. Moritz left $35 million to establish the Phil St. Moritz Center for Innovation at Reis Hall. The new center will house the liberal-arts college’s Department of Computer and Information Science and the Allegheny Lab for Innovation and Creativity, which gives students and faculty tools to design and test prototypes of robotics, scientific instruments, virtual reality spaces, video games, and other high-tech products and devices.

The center will also create new technology and classroom spaces, collaborative study areas, and a multipurpose outdoor plaza.

St. Moritz, who died in 2021, graduated from Allegheny in 1961 with a degree in economics. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he founded the St. Moritz Group, which provides services in building maintenance, security, and staffing to Pittsburgh companies. He also owned Bill’s Marine Service, a Maryland company that sells and services boats.

Milken Community School

Amnon and Katie Rodan gave $15 million through their Rodan Family Foundation toward the Jewish day school’s $135 million capital campaign. The Rodan Family Academic Center has been renamed in honor of the gift.

Last year, the private school in Los Angeles purchased the American Jewish University’s 22-acre Familian campus in Bel Air, Calif. Its capital campaign aims to raise additional money to renovate the campus and expand student enrollment in grades 6 through 12.

Katie Rodan is a dermatologist who co-founded the skincare companies Rodan + Fields and Proactiv. Her husband, Amnon Rodan, is chairman emeritus of Rodan + Fields.

Vanderbilt Law School

Gail and Rob Cañizares donated $6.8 million through their Anbridge Charitable Fund to create the Gail Anderson Cañizares Innocence Clinic, which will operate as a course for second- and third-year law students to exonerate wrongfully convicted people in Tennessee. The Tennessee Innocence Project will partner with the law school to identify cases for the clinic to investigate.

Gail Cañizares graduated from Vanderbilt in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in English and minors in French and Spanish. She has volunteered with the Innocence Project for more than 15 years. Rob Cañizares retired in 2011 as president of MSA International, a manufacturer and supplier of safety equipment used in construction, the military, oil and gas production, and other hazardous industries.

Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota

David and Marlys Thies committed $5.5 million for athletics, scholarships, and unrestricted support. The gift includes $2.5 million outright and a planned bequest of $3 million. It will back a remodel of its gymnasium and create two scholarships named for I. Basil B. Rothweiler, who was president of the university from 1956 until 1963, and Ken Wiltgen, a former longtime basketball coach.

David Thies, who graduated from the university in 1959, was a leading member of its basketball and baseball teams during his time as a student there. After briefly playing professional baseball for the Kansas City Athletics, he went on to co-found Thies and Talle Enterprises, a property-management company in the Midwest.

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