Venture philanthropist Eli Broad
Eli Broad (pronounced as in “road”) is a renowned business leader who built two Fortune 500 companies from the ground up over a five-decade career in business. He is the founder-chairman of both SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home (formerly Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation).
Today, he is focused on venture philanthropy. The Broad family’s commitment to philanthropy and community includes ongoing leadership roles in art, education, science and civic development.
Michigan State University alumnus
The son of Lithuanian immigrants who settled in Detroit, Broad graduated with honors from Michigan State University in 1954 with a degree in accounting. In 1991, Eli Broad made what was at the time the largest gift commitment ever made to a public business school. His $20 million commitment to the Eli Broad College of Business and the Eli Broad Graduate School of Management – both renamed in his honor – was designed to help Michigan State University’s new full-time MBA program emerge as one of the nation’s top graduate management programs.
The original endowment funds MBA program operations, four endowed professorships and the Broad Scholars program. An additional contribution of nearly $2 million in 1998 was used to expand the MBA program’s emphasis on information technology, fund an endowed professorship and remodel two classrooms to serve as dedicated information systems labs.
Continuing support
Throughout the years, Broad has continued to add to his original gift. His recent gifts to support student scholarships in the MBA program brought his giving commitment to the Campaign for MSU to nearly $18 million. Broad has said the Midwest land grant university is the ideal candidate to help America regain its economic competitiveness through offering an enlightened curriculum and making quality education accessible to exceptional future business leaders from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. “By focusing Michigan State University’s MBA program on new management realities, and not simply on theory, by addressing real life problems of industry, and by attracting prestigious faculty and top students throughout the world, we will become more international in our thoughts and insights, and more competitive worldwide,” predicted Broad.
Learn more about Eli Broad at www.broadfoundation.org/eli/index.shtml.