Billionaire Ron Perelman and His Daughter Debra Give Princeton $65 Million: Gifts Roundup

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Princeton University

Billionaire investor Ronald Perelman and his daughter, Debra, gave $65 million through the Perelman Family Foundation to build a new Perelman College, the university’s seventh residential college.

Debra Perelman, who graduated from Princeton in 1996, was named Revlon’s chief executive in May. She is the cosmetics company’s first woman CEO. She previously worked in leadership roles for MacAndrews & Forbes, her father’s holding company, for 14 years. MacAndrews & Forbes has owned Revlon since 1985, and Debra Perelman started her career at the cosmetics giant as a management trainee in 1998.

Ronald Perelman previously gave Princeton $4.7 million in 1995 to establish the Ronald O. Perelman Institute for Judaic Studies. He has given extensively to many nonprofits, and since 2006 he has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the most-generous donors six times.

University of Michigan Law School

Chris and Lisa Jeffries donated $33 million for financial aid, summer programs, and reduction of students’ debt for academic loans.

Chris Jeffries is a former lawyer and one of the founders of Millennium Partners, a real-estate development company that operates nationally. He graduated from the law school in 1974. Earlier, the Jeffries gave $5 million to build the law school’s South Hall, which will now be named for them, and $2.5 million to the Student Funded Fellowships program for first-year students.

University of Arizona

James Wyant and his family gave $20 million to the College of Optical Sciences to endow 10 new professorships.

A pioneer in the optics and photonics field, Wyant is the college’s founding dean and a professor emeritus of the university. He joined the university as an assistant professor of optical sciences in 1974. In 1999, he was named director of the Optical Sciences Center and became the founding dean as he led the transition of the center to a college in 2005.

This donation to the university is not Wyant’s first. In 2013, the year he retired, he gave $10 million to support scholarships for graduate students.

National Public Radio

Jarl and Pamela Mohn pledged $10 million to support the public-radio network’s fundraising drive, which kicks off efforts to mark the nonprofit’s 50th anniversary in 2020.

Jarl Mohn is a private investor and the chief executive of National Public Radio. He has announced that he plans to step down from that role in June, when he will assume a new position leading the fundraising campaign.

Smithsonian Latino Center

The Molina family gave $10 million for the center’s first gallery, which will be named for the family. The new Latino Center is scheduled to open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2021.

The donors — Martha Molina Bernadett, her brother Mario Molina, and their siblings John, Janet, and Josephine — are the children of Dr. C. David Molina, a Long Beach, Calif., physician who founded the publicly traded company Molina Healthcare.

University of North Carolina at Wilmington

David and Helen Congdon pledged $10 million to establish the David S. Congdon School of Supply Chain, Business Analytics and Information Systems, within the Cameron School of Business.

David Congdon is executive chairman of Old Dominion Freight Line, which his grandparents founded in 1934. After graduating from the university in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, he worked for the freight company as a dock worker, truck driver, mechanic, and industrial engineer before serving in executive positions. He was named chief executive in 2008 and became the chairman this year.

North Valley Community Foundation

NFL football player Aaron Rodgers gave $1 million to help survivors of the Camp Fire, the wildfire that destroyed nearly all of Paradise, Calif., and homes in surrounding areas.

Rodgers is a quarterback for the Green Bay Packers football team. He was born and raised in Chico, Calif., near the area affected by the Camp Fire.

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