You won’t find mention of Orange County in the ongoing talk of the biggest single donation in Harvard University’s history.
There’s a connection to OC, though, and it comes through Ronnie Chan, one of the two brothers from Hong Kong who head the Morningside Foundation, which last week presented Harvard with $350 million to go toward its School of Public Health.
Morningside is the philanthropic arm of Morningside Group, a venture capital and private equity investor that Chan cofounded in 1986.
Chan, who also is chairman of real estate developer Hang Lung Group and its Hang Lung Properties subsidiary, claims that “you won’t find anyone from Hong Kong who spends more time in OC than me.”
That was part of the Business Journal’s conversation with Chan last year at Hang Lung’s office in Central, Hong Kong.
Chan said at the time that he travels often to California, to North Orange County in particular. He had just a day prior returned to Hong Kong from a trip to OC, during which he said he stayed at a Radisson Suites in Buena Park.
OC Ties
His ties to North OC go back some 30 years, when he got married and settled in the area.
That was after Chan spent the 1970s in Los Angeles, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from California State University-Los Angeles, as well as an MBA from the University of Southern California.
He joined Hang Lung in 1972 and became chairman in 1991.
The publicly listed company, founded in 1960 by Chan’s late father, Tseng-Hsi Chan, recently had market capitalization of $7.6 billion. It had about $931 million in profit last year.
Organizations
Chan, who could not be reached for comment for this story, is involved in various organizations focused on economic development and philanthropy, including serving as co-chair of the Asia Society and as director of the Asia-Africa Development and Exchange Society of China. He also is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and the Committee of 100.
The recent gift to Harvard was announced by the school and Gerald Chan, Ronnie’s younger brother, who got his master’s degree from Harvard School of Public Health in 1975 and a doctorate degree in 1979.
Harvard said its school will be renamed the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health after the Chans’ father.
Among Top
Morningside’s gift is among the top donations to U.S. universities, according to a list by the Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington D.C., which includes a $600 million donation by Intel Corp. cofounder Gordon Moore and wife, Betty, to the California Institute of Technology.
Among the biggest gifts to any Orange County school came last August, when Dale Fowler and his wife, Sarah Ann, gave $55 million to Chapman University’s law school in Orange.
