Visionary of the Year:
Philanthropist Priscilla Chan wins award for social change.
“I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to give back. I will spend the rest of my career trying to make San Francisco and the world a little bit better.” Dr. Priscilla Chan, 2017 Visionary of the Year
Priscilla Chan, the U.S.-born child of Chinese refugees from Vietnam, worked as a volunteer tutor and then as a science teacher, where she saw children with health problems that slowed their education. She took up medicine and became a pediatrician, encountering youngsters whose woes often exceeded the conditions she could treat. And as the mother of a 15-month-old daughter, with another child due this fall, she has personal reasons to be preoccupied with children’s health.
So shortly before her daughter’s birth, Chan and her husband set an ambitious goal: to cure, treat or prevent all known human diseases within their child’s lifetime. To that end, they committed $3 billion over the next 10 years, and over their lifetimes 99 percent of their shares in Facebook, headed by Chan’s husband, Mark Zuckerberg.
Chan is also chief executive of a project in East Palo Alto called the Primary School, an experiment in bringing together health care and education under one roof. And in her spare time, she remains a practicing pediatrician at San Francisco General Hospital, in a building named for her and Zuckerberg in recognition of their $75 million gift to the hospital.
For Chan’s philanthropy and dedication, she received the third annual Visionary of the Year award announced by The San Francisco Chronicle at a Thursday evening gala at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.
The award honors Bay Area leaders who work to create social change and carries a $25,000 grant from The Chronicle and a $10,000 scholarship in the winner’s name from St. Mary’s College School of Economics and Business Administration in Moraga, The Chronicle’s partner in creating the award.
Chan, with her husband standing by her side, said she will donate the $25,000 to the Hamilton Foundation, a nonprofit that helps homeless children and their families in San Francisco.
The 32-year-old spoke cheerfully as she accepted the award.
San Francisco, she said, “gave me the technical skills to do my work,” as well as “the culture where we have the audacity to see that anything’s possible.”
“I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to give back,” she said. “I will spend the rest of my career trying to make San Francisco and the world a little bit better.”
The audience of about 200 from the Bay Area’s social, financial and political scene included San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — a member of the nominating committee for the award — and former Secretary of State George Shultz along with his wife, Charlotte Shultz.
Chan was among six finalists for the Visionary award. The others were Eric Weaver, founder and CEO of the Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit micro-loan program to help underserved small-business owners; Sarah Krevans, CEO of Sutter Health, which under her leadership has expanded its outreach to the homeless; Raj Jayadev, co-founder of Silicon Valley De-Bug, an advocate for changes in criminal laws to help the poor; Angela Blackwell, founder and president of PolicyLink, which works with community groups to help the disadvantaged; and Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls Code, a nonprofit dedicated to improving gender diversity in the tech industry.
Each of the nominees received a certificate from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, “in recognition of outstanding and invaluable service to the community.”
Previous winners were Evan Marwell, founder and chief executive of Education Superhighway, a nonprofit that provides high-speed Internet to public schools, and, Chase Adam, creator of Watsi, a crowd-funded medical care platform for people in impoverished nations.
“I’ve been awed by the genius and commitment of the visionaries who have emerged as nominees in the past three years. They are products of, and contributors to, the blend of idealism, intellect and resolve that pervades so many sectors in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said John Diaz, The Chronicle’s editorial page editor, who chaired the nominating committee. “This year’s class deserves our congratulations and encouragement in their six very distinct and very impressive efforts to change the world for the better.”
In an interview this month, Chan said she’s probably being naive to set a cure-everything goal and expects decades of failures along with successes. But the idea behind the project called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, she said, is to create a mind-set — “lifting all boats” — to generate breakthrough research.
“It feels very urgent and personal, not only because of my daughter, but because of how universal that must feel,” she said.