Susan Samueli is a philanthropic force of nature.
How else to describe a woman who recently added work on behalf of Orangewood Children’s Foundation to a charitable agenda that ranges from homeopathy to micro-lending in the Third World?
She jointly runs Corona del Mar-based Samueli Foundation with husband Henry Samueli.
He’s a cofounder of Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. who bought the Anaheim Ducks hockey team—a couple of profit-driven enterprises that point to his varied interests.
She takes a similar approach on philanthropy.
“It may look very eclectic, but when we sit down in our board room it makes sense to us,” Susan Samueli said of her foundation’s approach.
Her remarks came at a recent fundraiser for the Fountain Valley-based Coastline Community College Foundation at Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Other panelists included Wing Lam, cofounder of Santa Ana-based Wahoo’s Fish Taco, and Shaheen Sadeghi, chief executive of Costa Mesa-based retail-center operator Lab Holding LLC (see OC Insider item, page 3).
“When you’re trying to give your time and you’re trying to give your money, you have to find the thing that you’re passionate about,” Samueli said. “Then it makes it a very easy choice.”
One on her passions is alternative medicine.
“Like many people of the era that I’m from, those of us who got into alternative medicine had a health crisis themselves and didn’t find much help from conventional, western doctors,” she said.
Susan Samueli holds a math degree from University of California, Berkley, another degree from the British Institute of Homeopathy in England, and a Ph.D. in nutrition from American Holistic College of Nutrition (now Clayton College of Natural Health in Montgomery, Ala.).
She worked as a programmer and systems engineer at IBM Corp. until 1985, when she left to raise her children.
The Samuelis have established the Samueli Institute, a nonprofit alternative medicine research center in Alexandria, Va., and the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine at University of California, Irvine, which started in 2000 with a $5.7 million gift from the couple.
Susan Samueli said she is especially interested in homeopathic medicine, which is based on the belief that certain substances that cause sickness in healthy individuals can be used to treat those with illnesses.
“People think of it as kind of a ‘woo-woo’ thing,” Samueli acknowledged, using the sort of expression sometimes applied by skeptics to such practices.
Samueli contends homeopathy works, and the Samueli Institute funds research in the field.
The Samuelis also are involved in micro-lending in Africa, where capital is sorely needed for business development in many countries.
Susan Samueli also is involved closer to home through the Santa Ana-based Orangewood Children’s Foundation. She most recently has helped the foundation’s push for a residential high school academy for foster kids.
Santa Ana-based Mind Research Institute is another key recipient of funding from the Samueli Foundation. Mind Research makes interactive math and science software for schools nationwide.
The U.S. has a shortage of students pursuing science and engineering, and “we need those kids,” she said.
