Philadelphians Catherine and Anthony Clifton Give UPenn $120 Million

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of Pennsylvania Medicine

Catherine and Anthony Clifton gave $120 million to support programs aimed at turning scientific discoveries into new medical treatments, and to support the Pavilion at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and rename it the Clifton Center for Medical Breakthroughs.

Catherine Clifton has served on the faculty of Tufts University School of Medicine’s Community Medicine Department, training future health-care professionals, and previously worked as vice president of Review Publishing. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in city and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania and she earned a master’s degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Anthony Clifton founded and leads AAC Holdings, a Philadelphia consulting and mentoring firm that serves owners and senior managers of small businesses. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Review Publishing, which operated newspapers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and held leadership roles at Comcast Corporation, State Street Bank, and others.

World Resources Institute and University of Chicago

Michael and Tanya Polsky gave a total of $100 million through their Polsky Foundation to support efforts to speed up the transition to new and reliable forms of energy. Of the total, the Poskys are giving $75 million to World Resources Institute to launch the Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, and $25 million to the University of Chicago to establish the Polsky Energy Transition Leadership Academy.

“The energy transition is inevitable, but it’s not an instantaneous shift and we must lead it strategically,” said Michael Polsky in a news release. “If we don’t seize this opportunity, others will. In the quest for energy independence, we must build resilient systems that are less vulnerable to volatile markets.”

Researchers and experts at the Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition will work on developing ways to transition to clean, affordable, and reliable energy in the future; and how to overcome barriers to modernizing and expanding energy grids, financing the energy transfer, and sourcing critical minerals responsibly. The center will also develop programs to build a skilled workforce. The Polsky Energy Transition Leadership Academy will be housed within University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth, and will provide students interested in energy careers a range of programs, including experiential learning opportunities and immersive field experiences.

Michael Polsky is an engineer who founded the clean-energy company Invenergy in 2001. Earlier in his career, he worked for coal, oil, nuclear energy, and natural gas companies before founding two independent power companies that developed combined heat and power and gas plants. He has served on World Resources Institute’s Board of Directors since 2004.

University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Yousry and Linda Sayed pledged $25 million to support health-care programs and faculty salaries. Of the total, $20 million will be used to augment the university’s programs in medical education, clinical care, research, health-care accessibility, and health-care workforce programs. The remaining $5 million will be used to recruit and retain faculty.

Yousry Sayed is president and CEO of Quality Chemical Laboratories, a Wilmington, N.C., company that serves the pharmaceutical industry. Before founding the company in 1998, he was a professor in the university’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and he served as an academic administrator. He now serves on the university’s Board of Trustees.

Linda Sayed is a family law specialist and a partner at the Wilmington, N.C., law firm Block, Crouch, Keeter, Behm & Sayed, and she previously worked as an associate attorney with Ward & Smith, P.A. She earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from the university in 1978 and 1985, respectively. She started her career as a chemistry teacher and later served as an assistant principal with New Hanover County Schools, in Wilmington.

North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ross Lampe Jr. pledged $20 million to support the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, where researchers from both universities focus on biomedical imaging, biomedical microdevices, rehabilitation engineering, regenerative medicine and pharmacoengineering. The department will be renamed for the donor.

Lampe is the retired founder of SiteLink Software and SiteLink Merchant Services, technology companies that he launched in 1996. Prior to founding those companies, he led radio-frequency technology development for Ericsson Telecommunications in North America, and held leadership roles in defense-related companies.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Lampe is currently working toward an additional doctorate in comparative biomedical sciences in North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Morehouse College

Daniel and Patricia Jorndt gave $5 million to establish and endow the Marion E. Williams scholarship, which will help financially-struggling students majoring in business and STEM fields. The scholarship is named for Daniel Jorndt’s first boss, the late Des Moines pharmacist Marion E. Williams.

Jorndt is a retired CEO of the drugstore giant Walgreens. He said in a news release that he credits his success to the many life lessons he learned as a young man while working at Williams’s neighborhood pharmacy in Des Moines in the late 1950s and early 1960s while attending pharmacy school.

Williams, who died in 2018 at 87, and his late wife, Corliss Williams, were respected local business leaders and philanthropists who mentored neighborhood children and college students, and invested in the professional development of the pharmacy’s staff.

Neither man attended Morehouse. Williams graduated from the Drake University School of Pharmacy in 1957 and Jorndt graduated from the same school in 1963. Jorndt joined Walgreens that year and rose through the ranks becoming president in 1990 and then chief executive officer from 1997 to 2003.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.