Orlando Bravo Gives Brown U. $25 Million for Data-Driven Economic Research (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle

Brown University

The financier Orlando Bravo gave $25 million through his Bravo Family Foundation to launch the Center for Economic Research and enable the university’s economics department to expand its data-driven research efforts.

Of the total, $15 million will go toward the creation of the new center, while the remaining $10 million will back the hiring of more economics faculty.

Bravo earned bachelors’ degrees from Brown in economics and political science in 1992 before earning law and MBA degrees at Stanford. He then went on to help found a private-equity firm, Thoma Bravo.

He grew up in Puerto Rico, and much of his philanthropy has centered on social mobility there and elsewhere in the United States. In 2017, he pledged $10 million to establish a disaster-relief organization to help citizens of Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria.

University of Utah

Robert and Katharine Garff, and their sons, John and Matthew Garff, pledged $17.5 million to help pay the costs of renovating and expanding the university’s Rice-Eccles Stadium.

Robert Garff is chairman of the Ken Garff Automotive Group, which was founded by his father, Ken, in 1932. Matthew Garff serves as the company’s executive director of asset management, and John Garff is chief executive of the affiliated Garff Enterprises.

University of Chicago Law School

The billionaire financier David Rubenstein gave $13 million to support the Rubenstein Scholars Program, which was established in 2010 with an initial gift of $10 million.

The program provides full-tuition scholarships for law students over three years. Including his newest donation, he has given $46 million to the effort since it launched nine years ago.

Rubenstein co-founded the Carlyle Group, an international private-equity firm. A scholarship student himself, Rubenstein earned a degree from the law school in 1973 and, after practicing law for two years, went on to work as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. He later served as President Jimmy Carter’s deputy assistant for domestic policy.

Arizona State University

Leo and Annette Beus donated $10 million to support the construction of the Beus Compact X-Ray Free Electron Laser Lab, a vault that will house the world’s first compact X-ray laser machine.

Leo Beus is a litigation lawyer who co-founded Beus Gilbert PLLC, a Phoenix law firm specializing in real estate and zoning law.

The couple are not ASU alumni but have been generous donors. In 2014, they gave $10 million to the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Center for Law and Society, and before that, they donated a total of $5 million for scholarships, an endowed professorship, athletics, and other programs.

Belmont University

James and Lois Archer donated $5 million through their family foundation to endow the newly named Archer Presidential Scholarship, which provides full tuition, room, board, books, and fees for four academic years of continuous study. The university will match the Archers’ gift with additional $5 million.

James Archer founded Multi-Chem, an oilfield production and services company that he sold to Halliburton in 2011 for an undisclosed sum. He currently serves as president and chief executive of the San Angelo, Tex., oil and gas company, KJ Energy, and leads MV2 Entertainment, a music publisher in Nashville.

Yale School of Public Health

David R. Kessler pledged $5 million to create the David R. Kessler Endowed Professorship and to support teaching and research that advances treatment of LGBTQ mental health. He also gave $200,000 to support Yale’s Esteem Research Group, which is dedicated to helping LGBTQ individuals fight depression, anxiety, and substance-abuse problems.

Kessler is a retired psychiatrist who served as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco Medical School and also as a unit supervisor at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. He earned a medical degree at Yale in 1955 and completed his residency there in 1961.

During his career, Kessler established the country’s first formal gay doctors’ organization, the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, and later served as president of the organization that became the American Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists.

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