Eli Broad

Eli Broad grew up in Detroit and earned his CPA while studying at Michigan State University. He founded KB Home (originally Kaufman and Broad) in 1957 with partner Donald Kaufman, building the company into one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. He later founded SunAmerica, an annuity and retirement savings company, which he grew from a small firm into a major financial services company and sold to AIG in 1999 for approximately $18 billion — a transaction that made Broad a billionaire many times over. The feat of founding two separate companies that each reached Fortune 500 scale is unique in American business history. Broad became one of America's most significant philanthropists, donating over $4 billion during his lifetime to art, education, and scientific research. His donations include major gifts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the founding of The Broad contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles, the founding of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (dedicated to genomics and biomedical research), and substantial gifts to education reform initiatives. He passed away in April 2021.