Billionaire John Anderson and his wife Marion have given his namesake UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management a $25 million gift — the largest in the school’s history.
The school said Monday that the donation from the Andersons, who have given $17 million in gifts to the school in the past, would benefit academic programs, student aid and faculty research at the management school, which was named after Anderson in honor of the family’s first donation in 1987. The latest gift brings to nearly $42 million the amount that the Andersons have donated to the school.
“Our legacy, built over 75 years, owes a lot to John and Marion Anderson’s leadership and longtime support,” Dean Judy Olian said in a statement. ” This remarkable gift will enable us to chart that future by investing in a broad range of strategic initiatives, including research that advances management thinking and practice, curriculum initiatives that prepare our students to become global leaders, and student support that attracts the most talented candidates from around the world.”
Anderson, 93, is president of Topa Equities Ltd., which owns businesses real estate, insurance, automobile dealerships and other industries. He earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UCLA in 1940, and later earned an MBA from Harvard and a law degree from Loyola in Los Angeles. Marion Anderson is vice chairman of Topa Equities Ltd. and her philanthropies include the serving as co-chair of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles board of trustees.
Both Andersons are members of the UCLA Anderson board of visitors and he is a past chairman. In addition to the naming gifts that enabled construction of a new business school complex, the Andersons’ gifts have funded two faculty positions: the dean’s John E. Anderson Chair in Management, the Marion Anderson Chair in Management.
“I was very lucky to come to UCLA on a scholarship, and I’ve never forgotten that,” Anderson said in a statement. “The lessons and values I learned while attending UCLA shaped my thinking throughout my business and community life and helped build my business reputation. Giving back to the school is my way of enabling future generations to have the kind of opportunities that UCLA offered me. It is simply doing the right thing.”
