The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a medical school in the Bronx, and directed that the gift be used to pay future tuition for all students.
Donor Dr. Ruth Gottsman is a former professor at Einstein College, where she researched learning disabilities, developed screening tests, and implemented literacy programs. This is one of the largest philanthropic gifts to an educational institution in the United States, and will likely be the largest gift ever made to a medical school.
The wealth came from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate founded by Buffett.
The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it will go to a medical facility in the Bronx, one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. The Bronx ranks among the unhealthiest counties in New York state, with high rates of premature death. Over the past few generations, many billionaires have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to prestigious medical schools and hospitals in Manhattan, the city's wealthiest borough.
While her husband ran the investment firm First Manhattan, Dr. Gottsman had a long career at Einstein, a highly regarded medical school, starting in 1968 as director of psychoeducational services. She is a longtime member of Einstein's Board of Trustees and currently serves as its chair.
In recent years, she has become close with Dr. Philip Ozua, a pediatrician who oversees the medical school and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as the health system's chief executive officer. That friendship and trust loomed large as she considered what to do with the money her husband left behind.
In an interview Friday at Einstein's campus in the Morris Park area, Dr. Ozur and Dr. Gottsman spoke about the donation, how it came together and what it means for Einstein's medical students. Told.
friendship
In early 2020, the two sat next to each other on a 6 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, Florida. This was the first time we had spent hours together.
They talked about their childhoods, hers in Baltimore, his in Nigeria some 30 years later, and what they have in common. They both earned doctorates in education and spent their careers working at the same institution in the Bronx, helping children and families in need.
Dr. Ozua talked about moving to New York without knowing anyone in the state and spending years as a community doctor in the South Bronx before rising to the top of medical school.
As they exited the airport and approached the curb, Dr. Ozur held out his arm to Dr. Gottsman, who was not yet 90 years old at the time. She waved him off and said, “Watch your step,” he recalled with a laugh.
Within weeks, the coronavirus brought the world to a screeching halt. Dr. Gottsman's husband, who is in his 90s, contracted the new pathogen and she had only mild symptoms. Dr. Ozur sent an ambulance to Gottsman's home in Rye, New York, and took him to Montefiore, the largest hospital in the Bronx.
Over the next few weeks, Dr. Ozua began making daily visits, wearing full protective gear, to check on the couple until Gottsman recovered. “That's how friendships were formed,” he said. “I probably spent about three weeks visiting them in Rye every day.”
About three years ago, Dr. Ozur asked Dr. Gottsman to serve as chair of the medical school. She had done the job before, which surprised her considering her age. The gesture reminded her of the fable of the lion and the mouse, she told Dr. Ozua at the time, explaining that when the lion saves the mouse's life, the mouse says, “Maybe someday I'll be able to help you.'' .
In the story, the lion laughs haughtily. “But Phil didn't say, 'Ha, ha, ha,'” she said with a smile.
money
Dr. Gottsman's husband passed away in 2022 at the age of 96. “Her husband left me his entire portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stocks without my knowledge,” she recalled. The instructions were simple. “Do whatever you think is right,” she recalls.
I didn't think about it at first because it was too hard to think about. However, her children advised her not to wait too long.
Once she focused on her legacy, she recalled, she quickly knew what she wanted to do. “I wanted to provide funding so Einstein students could receive free tuition,” she said. She has enough funds to do it permanently, she said.
Over the years, she has interviewed dozens of potential Einstein medical students. Tuition costs more than $59,000 a year, and many medical school graduates graduate with debts exceeding $200,000.
She hoped that not only would future students be able to embark on their careers debt-free, but that her gift would allow more aspiring doctors to apply to medical school. “We have amazing medical students, but this opens the door for many other students who are in financial situations where they wouldn't even consider going to medical school,” she said. .
“That's what makes me so happy about this gift,” she added. “I have the opportunity to not only help Phil, but to help Montefiore and Einstein in a transformative way, and I'm very proud and very humbled to have been able to do that.”
Dr. Gottsman went to see Dr. Ozua in December and told him he was planning to make a big gift. She reminded him of the story of the lion and the mouse. This is the mouse moment, she explained.
“If someone said, 'I'm going to give you a transformative gift for medical school,' what would you do?” she asked.
There were probably three things going on, Dr. Ozua said.
“For one thing, education can be made free–” he began.
“That’s what I want to do,” she said. He never mentioned other ideas.
Dr. Gottsman sometimes wonders what her late husband would have thought of her decision.
“I hope he’s smiling and not grimacing,” she said with a laugh. “But he gave me the opportunity to do this and I think he'll be happy, I hope so.”
Einstein is not the first medical school to eliminate tuition fees.
In 2018, New York University announced it would begin offering free tuition to medical students, leading to a surge in applicants.
name
Dr. Gottesman was reluctant to put his name on the donation. “No one needs to know,” Dr. Ozua recalled her saying at the beginning. However, Dr. Ozua insisted that others may be an inspiration to her life. “Here is a person who is fully committed to the welfare of others and who does not seek praise or recognition,” Dr. Ozua said.
Dr. Ozur pointed out that the current price to have your name on a medical school or hospital is probably one-fifth of Dr. Gottsman's donation. Cornell Medical College and New York Hospital now bear the last name of Sanford Weill, former head of Citigroup. New York University Medical Center has been renamed after Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone. Both men have donated hundreds of millions of dollars.
However, it is a condition of Dr. Gottesman's gift that the Einstein College of Medicine not change its name. Albert Einstein, the physicist who developed the theory of relativity, agreed to give his name to the medical school that opened in 1955.
Nothing beats the name, she pointed out. “We have such a great name – Albert Einstein.”