Born in New York but raised in Miami Beach, Donald Sussman showed a knack for making smart bets early on. He started following the stock market as a preteen and made a $300 investment in sugar, having correctly sensed the impact of the impending Cuban Revolution. Following in the footsteps of his father, he attended Columbia University, and then later received an MBA from New York University.
Today, Sussman is at the helm of hedge fund Paloma Partners, which he founded when he was 35 years old back in 1981. He was once married to Laurie Tisch, a member of the billionaire Tisch clan, who have left their mark on philanthropy, largely in New York City at institutions like NYU.
Sussman might be best known as a major political donor. His earliest donations on record trace back to 1989, when he backed Bill Bradley’s Senate campaign. Since then, he’s given millions to large Democratic PACs, including Priorities USA Action and Senate Majority PAC. He was one of the nation’s biggest donors to political outside spending groups in both the 2016 and 2020 cycles.
While his political giving looms large, Sussman also has a wide philanthropic footprint, having given upwards of $100 million through the years. His latest gift, a $1 million donation to Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, will be used to modernize the building that will become the new Holy Cross Family Health Center. Inside Philanthropy recently caught up with Sussman to find out more about the gift, some of the businessman’s other philanthropic interests, and where he sees his giving heading next.
“Starting from nothing”
Sussman’s father worked as an architect and general contractor, and Sussman was able to attend boarding school as well as travel abroad. But when he was a teen, his father passed, rocking the family. Sussman leaned on his education and eventually ended up working at investment firms while getting his MBA by night.
At 35, he decided he was tired of working for others and decided to start his own business, using, much like Jim Simons, quantitative models to invest. “Starting from nothing, I’ve been very fortunate to have had some good ideas that have led to a significant success. And I’ve always believed in helping others that were less fortunate than me,” Sussman told me.
Where philanthropy was concerned, Sussman started out by giving at the level he could afford. The first significant gift he made dates back to 1995 and went to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, which has been a destination for support from a number of Jewish-American philanthropists. Sussman’s gift to the institution funded an environmentally friendly building, the Sussman Family Environmental Center, at a time when green architecture was first being introduced into common parlance.
Sussman is also proud that Weizmann has done joint work with Arab scientists to tackle some of its target topics. In fact, Sussman says that the Sussman Family Environmental Center was the first in Israel to get permission to bring in Arab scientists. “It was, in many ways, a cultural breakthrough, too,” he added.
A big health gift
Sussman’s philanthropy tends to track the places where he has lived and had a chance to learn about the unique needs of each community. One of his priorities is making sure that people in those places have access to good medical care. For instance, in Maine, where Sussman spends a lot of time, he backed Pen Bay Healthcare and Blue Hill Hospital, home to the Sussman Building. “This is crucial to healthcare in that entire area of Maine, which is very rural. And prior to my gifts… there was very limited medical care,” Sussman said.
It’s a similar story at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale, an older hospital compared to some others in Broward County, and the destination of Sussman’s recent $1 million gift. Sussman was enthusiastic about the doctors who worked there and connected with CEO Mark Doyle, who had a strong vision for bringing the hospital up to speed. “This guy has the vision for how to take what was, 20 years ago, the very best hospital in Broward County and adding all the new technology that will give great medical care to the neighborhood,” Sussman said.
Sussman’s interest in supporting the medical field is a family affair. His mother is 107, his sister is a retired internist, and his nephew teaches radiology at Harvard. At one point, Sussman said, he was considering a medical career himself. He says that he’s always believed that access to good medical care has always been a way to extend and improve your life. His goal now is to extend that to the broadest range of people possible.
In an American healthcare system in which insurance companies and reimbursement play a massive role, Sussman believes that the best shot at upgrading facilities is through philanthropy. At Holy Cross, Sussman praised the work of Doyle, who is building out the hospital’s development department, which now has about seven staff. When Sussman sat down with Doyle, he quickly discovered that Holy Cross has a long list of needs. His first move was to bolster the family care center, which was in need of new equipment and new technology. “It rang [true] to me… because having spent a fair amount of time watching patients come in for care there, it’s really the entire community that this place serves. This seemed like a great way to help them get their philanthropic drive going,” Sussman said.
Parting thoughts
On the board of directors of the Center for American Progress, EMILY’s List, Skidmore College and more, Sussman operates in the worlds of business, politics and philanthropy. But in general, he sees his philanthropy and his political donations as two distinct buckets.
Sussman spoke glowingly about Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, where his daughter, Emily Tisch Sussman, graduated, initially intending to be a costume designer, but eventually becoming “a first-class lawyer.” Sussman and family donated $12 million to the school in the late aughts. Today, his daughter works as a lawyer and political strategist. “Actually, President Biden credits her for pursuing him harder than any lobbyist for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” he said of the successful 2010 effort to repeal the military policy.
Sussman expects his family’s generosity to be generational, with his two children already both serving on philanthropic boards. And his son-in-law runs a basketball enrichment program in Harlem. “It’s definitively multigenerational,” Sussman said. “Their mother [Laurie Tisch] is very philanthropic and spends a lot of time on that. It’s a family pleasure to share that experience and the joy of helping others.”
