Chicago Financier Ken Griffin Gives $40 Million to N.Y. Museum

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

American Museum of Natural History

Kenneth Griffin gave $40 million to support the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, which is scheduled to open next winter. A four-story atrium space within the new center will be named for Griffin.

The new center will house some of the museum’s collections as well as a large insectarium that will include a huge beehive and digital and interactive exhibits. There will also be a substantial space for visitors to intermingle year-round with free-flying butterflies, a 360-degree theater, and other exhibits and programs.

Griffin founded Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago hedge fund, and has given extensively to nonprofits, with some of his largest gifts directed to universities and museums. He appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2014.

The Atlantic Council

Adrienne Arsht gave $25 million to endow the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, which was launched and named for her when she gave the Washington think tank $5 million in 2013. The center focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean’s role globally.

Arsht is lawyer and businesswoman who divides her time, business, and philanthropy interests primarily between Miami and Washington. She served as chair of TotalBank, a Miami bank, for many years before she sold it to Banco Popular Spain in 2007.

In 2019, she gave the think tank $25 million to endow the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and has given extensively over the years to arts and culture organizations, higher-education institutions, Hispanic causes, public policy, and resilience efforts.

Kansas State University

Robert Campbell left $17 million to establish two scholarship programs: the Robert E. Campbell Opportunity Scholarship and the Robert E. Campbell Opportunity Scholars Recognition Fund.

Campbell, who died last year, was a first-generation college student who studied business administration at the university through the GI Bill after serving in WWII with the U.S. Army Air Corps, a precursor to the U.S. Air Force.

He graduated from the university in 1950 and taught himself over time how the oil business worked. In 1963, he launched his own business, the Robert E. Campbell Oil and Gas Operations, which he led for more than five decades. In 2018, he gave Kansas State’s College of Business Administration a $1 million gift.

Thomas Jefferson School

David and Debra Humphreys pledged $15 million to help the private school lower its cost of tuition for all students beginning with the upcoming academic year and to support financial aid and merit-based scholarships. The couple helped to found the school in 1993.

David Humphreys is president and CEO of TAMKO Building Products, a roofing manufacturer in Galena, Kan. Debra Humphreys founded and leads Compass Academy Network, a Joplin, Mo., nonprofit that partners with rural school districts to provide free summer-school programs to middle-school students.

Cedars-Sinai Health System

Maxine Platzer Lynn gave $10 million to establish the Bernard and Maxine Platzer Lynn Family Memory and Healthy Aging Program in the Department of Neurology. The program is an effort to develop long-term preventive-care practices aimed at promoting healthy aging in patients 40 and older and coordinating and navigating care for older patients. It will also include a brain-health program for patients at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Lynn, who is 93, said in a news release that she made the gift to commemorate the life of her late husband, Bernard, a gemologist who spent his career working for his family’s Washington area Lynn Jewelers. Bernard died in 2015.

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Richard Perlman and Ellen Hanson pledged $10 million to create the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition program, which will raise awareness that many entrepreneurial endeavors blossom through a new owner’s investment and dedication to growing an existing small business.

The gift will also be used to support programs at the Venture Lab, an entrepreneurship center that will house the new program, and establish the Perlman Fellows program for students interested in entrepreneurship through business acquisition.

Richard Perlman founded the ExamWorks Group, which provides medical evaluations to the property and casualty market for workers compensation, automotive, and general liability injury claims. He graduated from Wharton’s undergraduate program in 1968.

Harvard Kennedy School

James and Cathleen Stone gave $5 million through their James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation to establish a new program that will bring together scholars to study and tackle wealth inequality.

James Stone founded Plymouth Rock, a group of insurance companies. Earlier in his career, he taught economics at Harvard after earning a bachelor’s degree and an Ph.D. there. From 1975 to 1979, he served as the insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and then served as chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Cathleen Douglas Stone is a lawyer and former partner of the Boston law firm Foley, Hoag & Eliot, where she practiced environmental and administrative law. She served as Boston’s first chief of environmental services in the 1990s.

Kalamazoo College

Robert Kopecky gave $5 million to establish the Ervin J. and Violet A. Kopecky Endowed Scholarship Fund, named for his parents, and the Robert J. Kopecky ’72 Endowed Study Abroad Fund. The money will also be used to back the college’s other study-abroad programs, scholarships, and the Kalamazoo College Fund.

Kopecky is a trial lawyer who has spent more than 40 years at the Kirkland & Ellis firm’s Chicago offices. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Kalamazoo in 1972. While a student there, he studied abroad for six months in Nairobi, Kenya, and traveled to Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa. Kopecky is the author of The Season of Living Dangerously: A Fan’s Notes On Baseball’s Strangest Season.

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