The latest donation to Northwestern University will benefit future business and startup leaders, and has its own roots in Chicago tech.
This week, the Christopher B. Galvin Family Foundation, headed up by former Motorola CEO Chris Galvin and his wife Cynthia Galvin, announced a $10.25 million donation to the university. $10 million is an unrestricted donation to the Kellogg School of Management, and $250,000 will go toward NUseeds, a fund that makes seed investments in ventures launched by Northwestern students.
The first-floor design wing and the conference center in the Kellogg's Global Hub (a new facility for the business school that will open in 2017) will be named for the Galvin family.
“This is an opportunity to give back,” said Galvin in a statement. “Kellogg played an important role in my career, especially in my post-Motorola investing and business management.”
Galvin has degrees from both Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Kellogg School of Management. He's served as board chairman at Cleversafe and NAVTEQ, and was chairman and CEO of Motorola from 1997 to 2004 (his grandfather founded the company). Today he's the chairman, CEO and cofounder of Harrison Street Capital, a real estate investment management firm.
It's the latest in a string of investments by Chicago tech and business leaders to local universities.
- May 2016: Invenergy CEO Michael Polsky donated $35 million to University of Chicago's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship.
- May 2016: Former CDW CEO John Edwardson donated $5 million to support social entrepreneurship at UChicago.
- December 2015: Chris Gladwin, founder of Cleversafe (sold to IBM for $1.3 billion) donated $7.6 million to Illinois Institute of Technology's computer science department.
- October 2015: J.B. and M.K. Pritzker donated $100 million to Northwestern Law to endow a legal entrepreneurship center (and rename the school to "Northwestern Pritzker School of Law").
