A $1 billion donation provides free tuition to a medical school in the Bronx
The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift will be used in the future to cover tuition for all students .
The donor, Dr. Ruth Gottesman, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and implemented literacy programs. It is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school.
The fortune came from her late husband, David Gottesman, better known as Sandy, who was a protege of Warren Buffett and had invested early in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate Mr. Buffett built.
The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it goes to a medical facility in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. The Bronx has a high rate of premature deaths is considered the unhealthiest province in New York City. Over the past generation, a number of billionaires have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to better-known medical schools and hospitals in Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest borough.
While her husband ran an investment firm, First Manhattan, Dr. Gottesman had a long career at Einstein, a renowned medical school, beginning in 1968, when she took a job as director of psychoeducational services. She has been a longtime member of Einstein’s board of trustees and currently serves as chairman.
In recent years, she has become close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, the pediatrician who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as CEO of the health care system. That friendship and trust emerged as she thought about what to do with the money her husband left her.
In an interview on Friday at the Einstein campus in the Morris Park neighborhood, Dr. Ozuah and Dr. Gottesman on the donation, how it came about and what it would mean for Einstein medical students.
The friendship
In early 2020, the two sat next to each other on a 6 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, Florida. It was the first time they spent hours together.
They talked about their childhoods—hers in Baltimore, his, some thirty years later, in Nigeria—and what they had in common. Both had doctorates in education and had spent their careers at the same institution in the Bronx, helping children and families in need.
Dr. Ozuah described moving to New York without knowing a single person in the state and spending years as a community physician in the South Bronx before rising to the top of medical school.
Upon leaving the airport, Dr. Ozuah extended his arm to Dr. Gottesman, not quite 90 at the time, as they approached the curb. She waved him off and told him to “mind your own step,” he recalled with a chuckle.
Within a few weeks, the coronavirus brought the world to a standstill. The husband of Dr. Gottesman, in her 90s, became ill with the new pathogen, and she had a mild case. Dr. Ozuah sent an ambulance to the Gottesman home in Rye, NY, to take them to Montefiore, the largest hospital in the Bronx.
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Ozuah made daily home visits – in full protective gear – to inquire about the couple while Mr. Gottesman recovered. “That’s how the friendship started,” he said. “I probably visited them every day for three weeks in Rye.”
About three years ago, Dr. Ozuah Dr. Gottesman to lead the medical school’s board of trustees. She had done this job before, but considering her age, she was surprised. The gesture reminded her of the fable about the lion and the mouseshe told Dr. at the time. Ozuah, in which she explained that when the lion spares the mouse’s life, the mouse says to him, “Maybe one day I will help you.”
In the story the lion laughs haughtily. “But Phil didn’t say ‘ha, ha, ha,'” she noted with a smile.
The money
The husband of Dr. Gottesman died in 2022 at the age of 96. “Unbeknownst to me, he left me an entire portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock,” she recalls. The instructions were simple: “Do with it what you think is right,” she recalled.
It was overwhelming to think about, so at first she didn’t. But her children encouraged her not to wait too long.
When she focused on the legacy, she immediately realized what she wanted to do, she remembers. “I wanted to fund Einstein students so they could get free tuition,” she said. There was enough money to do that forever, she said.
Over the years, she had interviewed dozens of Einstein’s future medical students. Tuition exceeds $59,000 per year, and many graduate with crushing medical school debt, often more than $200,000.
Not only would future students be able to start their careers without the burden of debt, but she hoped her donation would also enable a broader group of aspiring doctors to apply to medical school. “We have great medical students, but this opens the door to many other students whose economic status is such that they wouldn’t even think about going to medical school,” she said.
“That makes me very happy with this gift,” she added. “I have the opportunity not only to help Phil, but also to help Montefiore and Einstein in a transformative way – and I’m just so proud and so humbled – both – that I was able to do it.”
Dr. Gottesman went to see Dr. in December. Ozuah to tell him that she would give a great gift. She reminded him of the story of the lion and the mouse. This, she explained, was the mouse’s moment.
“If someone said, ‘I’m giving you a transformative gift for medical school,’ what would you do?” she asked.
There were probably three things, Dr. Ozuah said.
“First of all,” he began, “you could get a free education….”
“That’s what I want to do,” she said. He never mentioned the other ideas.
Dr. Gottesman sometimes wonders what her late husband would have thought of her decision.
“I hope he’s smiling and not frowning,” she said, chuckling. “But he gave me the opportunity to do this, and I think he would be happy with it – I hope so.”
Einstein won’t be the first medical school to eliminate tuition.
In 2018, New York University announced it would offer free tuition to medical students saw an increase in the number of applications.
The name
Dr. Gottesman was hesitant to attach her name to her donation. “Nobody needs to know,” Dr. Ozuah initially remembered her saying. But Dr. Ozuah insisted others might find her life inspiring. “Here is someone who is completely committed to the well-being of others and does not want accolades or recognition,” said Dr. Ozuah.
Dr. Ozuah noted that the going rate for putting your name on a medical school or hospital was perhaps one-fifth of Dr. Gottesman. Cornell Medical College and New York Hospital now have the last name of Sanford Weill, the former head of Citigroup. The New York University Medical Center was renamed after Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone. Both men donated hundreds of millions of dollars.
But it is a condition of Dr.’s gift. Gottesman that the Einstein College of Medicine will not change its name. Albert Einstein, the physicist who developed the theory of relativity, agreed to lend his name to the medical school, which opened in 1955.
The name, she noted, couldn’t be right. “We have the damn name – we have Albert Einstein.”