Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Lands $25 Million for Pediatric Mental Health Program

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Gene and Mindy Stein gave $25 million through their Tikun Olam Foundation to launch the Stein Tikun Olam Early Connections Program, which will provide trauma-informed, culturally sensitive, infant-family mental health screenings and treatment for infants and toddlers receiving specialty medical care at the hospital. The program aims to help very young patients and their families overcome the challenges and psychosocial stressors that can affect children with complex medical conditions.

The gift will also be used to develop a training model for medical professionals so they will have a deeper understanding of the unique mental health needs of young patients with complex conditions and their families and share this model of care with other U.S. children’s hospitals.

Gene Stein is a retired vice chairman and director of Capital Strategy Research, a Los Angeles branch of Capital Group Companies, a global investment-management firm. He served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service early in his career. Mindy Stein is a retired speech pathologist. She worked for the Unified School District and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

ArtCenter College of Design

Judy Webb left $16.9 million to support the Martha Marsh Chandler Endowed Scholarship, which was established in 1988 by Webb’s mother and named for her. A devoted donor to the college, Webb’s bequest brings her total giving to ArtCenter to $24 million and pushes the college’s endowment past $100 million.

Webb was a California businesswoman and newspaper heiress. She was a granddaughter of the late Harry Chandler, an investor and publisher of the Los Angeles Times who had a hand in establishing many Los Angeles-area landmarks, companies, and institutions.

Webb led Lothrop Ventures, a real estate development firm she founded in 1987. Lothrop built storage facilities, single-family homes, and office properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was also involved with many cultural organizations during her lifetime. Webb served on ArtCenter’s board of trustees from 1991 to 2018 and as chairwoman from 2004 to 2007. Webb died last year at 85.

Providence Holy Cross Medical Center

Julian and Gladys Saunders left $16 million to support the construction of new operating rooms and the renovation of the medical center’s emergency department trauma room. The bequest will also be used to establish and endow the Julian and Gladys Saunders Endowed Chair in Trauma Care, and the Julian and Gladys Saunders Endowed Chair in Palliative Care.

Julian Saunders was a Palm Desert, Calif., businessman who founded Saunders Ford, a car dealership in Mission Hills, Calif., and he owned self-storage warehouses. He earned a pilot’s license and volunteered with Flying Samaritans, a charity that transports medical professionals to Mexico to provide medical care to people who lack access to health care.

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Sandy Killion and her family gave $10 million to establish the Wayne Killion Endowment for the Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics and to rename the center for the Killion family. The endowment will support research and education programs focused on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Sandy Killion, and her sons David and Cooper Killion, lead Shook and Fletcher Services, a Vestavia Hills, Ala., company that owns Shook and Fletcher Supply, Vulcan Industrial Contractors, Vesta Industrial Contractors, and V Specialty Services Company.

Several members of the Killion family over three generations have suffered from different neurodegenerative diseases. Sandy Killion’s husband, Wayne Killion Jr., a physician, was diagnosed in 2019 with corticobasal degeneration and died in 2022, while their son, Wayne Killion III, was diagnosed with ALS and passed away in 2024. Her father-in-law, Wayne Killion Sr., who founded Shook and Fletcher, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and died in 2013.

Arizona State University

Annette Beus gave $5 million to establish the Beus Family Scholarships, which will support scholarships for 72 students in the School of Medicine and Advanced Medical Engineering. Beus is a longtime supporter of the university.

Among the previous donations she and her late husband, Leo Beus, gave the university was a $10 million gift to support the construction of the Beus Compact X-Ray Free Electron Laser Lab, a vault that houses the world’s first compact X-ray laser machine; $10 million to the back the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law’s Center for Law and Society; and $8 million to establish the Beus Center for Cosmic Foundations in the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

Leo Beus co-founded the Phoenix law firm Beus Gilbert, where he led the litigation department and took on large corporations and big accounting firms. He died in 2022 at 78.

Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

Bill Conway Jr. gave $2.35 million through his Bedford Falls Foundation-DAF to back the Leadership and Educational Advancement Program in Nursing. The program will support Atlanta-area community college students working to complete their associate’s degree in nursing who plan to continue on to bachelor’s and doctoral nursing studies at Emory, and those interested in pursuing careers in nursing research and education.

Conway co-founded the Washington, D.C., private-equity firm the Carlyle Group, and has given more than $325 million to nursing programs at nursing schools in the Eastern and mid-Atlantic regions. He told the Chronicle last year that he plans to give much more to nursing in the coming years.

This is Conway’s second donation to the Emory School of Nursing. Last year, he gave the nursing school $1 million through his foundation to support scholarships for bachelor’s degree students.

Building African American Minds

Eileen Amy Ryan gave $1 million to endow and expand the nonprofit’s program for girls and help the charity further its reach to middle school girls starting this fall. The Easton, Md., organization provides education, mentorship, and leadership-development programs to youths.

Ryan is a physician who specializes in hematopathology. She is a former director of the Hematology and Molecular Diagnostics laboratories at the University of Rochester Medical Center and was director of the URMC Labs until her appointment as Department Chair in 2004.

A transgender woman, Dr. Ryan said in a news release that she gave the donation because she wants to support mentorship, acceptance, and opportunities for girls and young women.

“I owe so much to the women in my life who helped me imagine a future I could never have realized on my own,” she said.

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