It’s been a busy month for Horatio Alger Award winners in Newport Beach.
A few weeks after the family of George Argyros (1993 winner) announced they’d be donating another $10 million to the Chapman business school named after the 1959 alumni, waterfront neighbor Ron Simon (2005 winner) and his wife, Sandi, announced a $9 million commitment from their Simon Foundation to provide full-tuition scholarships to the school’s two-year Physician Assistant program.
Students will be enrolled through Chapman’s Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the school’s Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine.
Beginning in 2021, the program will provide 10 full-tuition scholarships every year for five years “to underserved students who aspire to earn their master’s in medical science,” the school said.
It’s an extension of the Simon family’s long-running Simon Scholars Program that’s provided some $45 million in scholarships to high school and college students.
The announcement was made during the school’s annual Chapman Celebrates event, which brought notables such as Paul Musco, Jim and Kelly Mazzo, and Marta and Raj Bhathal to Orange.
Ron Simon, who now runs Newport Beach’s RSI Equity Partners, normally is all-business in public dealings, but he made a touching speech at the event, thanking his wife of 25 years, praising other family members involved in the foundation, and singing the virtues of OC despite, he quipped, having the “highest taxes in the world.”
That said, the taxes “are worth it” to live here, he added.
Harbor Island, sometimes referred to as “Billionaires Island,” has one more billionaire moving into the exclusive community.
Eric Siliang Tan, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Qutoutiao, a mobile content aggregator in China, paid some $37 million for a home on the northwest end of the tiny enclave, according to a recent report in Variety. It was sold by True Investments LLC’s Twila and Alan True, the report said.
Tan’s wealth is valued at about $1.7 billion, according to Forbes.
His new investment sits at the other end of the island as Donald Bren’s home.
Bren recently spent some time speaking with Dean Stoecker (a Shady Canyon resident, and a recent billionaire) about OC’s role in the tech world, the Alteryx CEO told our Kevin Costelloe (see story, page 4).
The Business Journal’s General Counsel Awards runs this Wednesday evening at Hotel Irvine.
Reese Kololyan, the new granddaughter of Richard Reisman, would like to remind attendees to turn their cellphones back on, after the conclusion of the event.
Born on Nov. 1, Reese is doing well, as is Reisman’s daughter Marisa and son-in-law Levon, our publisher reports.
A power-lunch with his first grandchild is planned soon in New York.
