New Sustainability School Opens, Thanks to a Billion-Dollar Donation

A new school affiliated with Stanford University located in California, United States will open its doors after receiving a substantial donation, and the focus will be to tackle the most pressing issues the planet is facing.

“Our goal is to make sure our kids have a habitable planet,” says Ann Doerr who, along with her husband John, donated a whopping $1.1 billion – the largest donation in the university’s history and the second-largest made to a higher education establishment.

The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability will focus on eight academic fields such as climate change, sustainable cities, energy technology, and human society and behavior. Grants will be given to jump-start policy and technology initiatives, thus making sure ideas will become concrete. To that effect, both near- and long-term time frames are considered for immediate projects to come to fruition within the next 5 to 10 years, and for issues to be tackled over the next 15 to 20 years. To solve the climate crisis, academia, business, nonprofits, governments, and citizens need to mobilize. “We need all hands on deck right now in climate philanthropy and climate scholarship, and John Doerr’s historic gift is an extraordinary commitment to that work,” says Jason Bordoff, co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School.