Columbia Business School (CBS) announced big news today: The Ronald O. Perelman Center for Business Innovation will rise on the school’s Manhattanville campus, opposite the Henry R. Kravis Building. Perelman, a longtime member of the CBS Board of Overseers and chairman and CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., has pledged $100 million to create the new facility, which will be named in his honor. Perelman’s gift matches the largest gift in the school’s history, which CBS alumnus Henry Kravis, the namesake of the Manhattanville campus’s other building, made in 2010.
“The Perelman Center will allow Columbia Business School to continue pioneering breakthroughs in management education, such as moving beyond functional expertise or siloed learning and ensuring a more integrated curriculum for our students,” CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard said in a statement. “It will help us create the classrooms of tomorrow and foster an even greater collaborative spirit among recruiters, students, alumni and faculty members, paving the way for a stronger network and more meaningful outcomes for our community,” he continued.
The two new Manhattanville campus buildings will be designed by New York architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. They will encompass more than 450,000 square feet and feature multifunctional spaces where students, faculty members, alumni and practitioners can all gather to exchange ideas.
“The business landscape is changing rapidly and dramatically, and as such the principles that define strong business leadership — such as an entrepreneurial mindset and solving complex challenges — are more important now than ever before,” Perelman said in a statement. “It is our responsibility to ensure that we are building a generation of great business leaders who drive success in an ever-changing, competitive global economy, and I believe Columbia Business School has its finger on the pulse of the changing nature of business education.”
A member of the CBS Board of Overseers since 1994, Perelman is an active philanthropist who has established the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program, the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at New York University Langone Medical Center, the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center and who serves on several prominent boards.
Learn more about Perelman’s $100 million gift to Columbia Business School.
