Campaign Leaders

George A. Weiss, W'65, Chair

Mr. Weiss is president of the money management firm he founded in 1978, and is CEO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers LLC. He is also a regent of the University of Hartford. In 1987, Mr. Weiss established the Say Yes to Education Foundation to guarantee a college education for 112 sixth-grade students at the Belmont School in West Philadelphia. In 1992, he was awarded the Michael Jackson Good Scout Humanitarian Award by the Boy Scouts of America's Los Angeles Area Council.

Mr. Weiss was recently honored with the Cleveland E. Dodge Medal for Distinguished Service. He also earned 5th Degree Black Belts in Taekwon-Do and Kitoshakai last year. He is a Member of the United States Martial Arts team, and an Internationally Certified Master Instructor.

At Penn, Mr. Weiss serves as a member of the Athletics Overseer Board. He also served as Chair of the University Committee for Undergraduate Financial Aid and President of the Connecticut Valley Alumni Club for a number of years. Other past service includes the Alumni Committee on Athletics, the Penn Alumni Board of Directors, the Jeff Davis Association, and the Alumni Club's Advisory Council. Mr. Weiss is a 1985 recipient of the Alumni Award of Merit.

Mr. Weiss has generously supported a wide variety of initiatives and programs across the University. He has been a longtime supporter of athletics programs, including contributions for the Weiss Weight Room, a football endowment, and other priorities. He is committed to student financial aid, establishing a number of endowed funds and challenge grants. His support of faculty includes the endowment of four George A. Weiss Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) University Professorships, and he has established five endowed chairs in three schools, including the George A. Weiss Professor of Computer and Information Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Dr. Robert Weiss Professor of Music at the School of Arts and Sciences, the Hum Rosen Professor at SAS, and the George and Diane Weiss Dean and Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education. Mr. Weiss established the Weiss Real Estate Center at the Wharton School and the Weiss Technology House, one of Penn's innovative interdisciplinary initiatives. He also supported the Weiss Center for International Financial Research at the Wharton School. Mr. Weiss has created a special challenge program designed to encourage exceptional donors, ''Men and Women of Pennsylvania,'' to contribute to undergraduate financial aid. This gift provides increased access to Penn for talented students of high potential, a key priority of President Gutmann's Penn Compact.

Robert M. Levy, WG’74, Co-Chair

Robert M. Levy is Partner, Chairman, and Chief Investment Officer of Harris Associates, LP, an investment management firm founded in 1976. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has been with Harris Associates since 1985. Mr. Levy also is President of the Robert M. Levy and Diane v.S. Levy Family Foundation, as well as a Trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Director of the Bill Nygren Foundation. He received his BA from Vanderbilt University.

Mr. Levy’s commitment to social impact and engagement has found expression in many gifts to Penn: in giving back to the University, he and his wife Diane v.S. Levy have sought to create opportunities for generations of students to serve communities and contribute to the improvement of society. The Levy Endowed Fellowship has provided aid to Wharton graduate students with less than three years of work experience, women, or underrepresented minorities, as well as funds for students considering careers in the non-profit sector. The Levy Social Impact Fund supports a wide variety of Wharton programs in ethics, social entrepreneurship, and socially responsible business education. The Levys have also been active supporters of the Penn Museum, where Mrs. Levy is a member of the Board of Overseers.

Most recently, the Levys endowed the Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy University Professorship, a Penn Integrates Knowledge professorship that will recruit an exceptional interdisciplinary scholar who will hold an appointment at two Penn schools, one of them intended to be Wharton. The PIK initiative’s mission, to understand the most pressing problems of our time and work toward solutions by integrating academic and professional disciplines, reflects the Levy’s forward-thinking philanthropic attitude. “On a long-term basis, how do you solve major world issues? From our perspective,” says Levy, “education does it.”

At Penn, Mr. Levy is Chair of Innovation and Leadership: The Campaign for Wharton and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School. He has been a member of the University Board of Trustees since 2005, and currently serves on its Executive, Budget and Finance, Compensation, and Development Committees, as well as serving as Chair of its Investment Board. He has also served on the Penn Alumni Council, the Penn Alumni Board of Directors and the Midwest Regional Advisory Board.

 

Rosemary Mazanet, GR'81, M'86, Co-Chair

Dr. Rosemary Mazanet is a general partner of Apelles Investment Management in New York and the CEO of DiabetesAmerica, a network of diabetes care and management centers. For over a decade, she has led initiatives to invest in and develop health care companies: she was co-founder and CEO of Breakthrough Therapeutics, a private cancer therapeutic vaccine company, and was also a General Partner and Chief Scientific Officer for Oracle Partners, LP, a healthcare investment firm.

After receiving her PhD and MD from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Mazanet trained as a hematologist and oncologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. As a faculty member there, she was a clinical investigator involved in the development of many pharmaceutical and biotech drugs. In 1993, she moved to the corporate biotech world as director of clinical research for Oncology at Amgen, Inc.

Dr. Mazanet is also Chair of the Campaign for the Perelman School of Medicine, a role she assumed following four years as Vice-Chair of the Perelman School of Medicine Campaign Cabinet. She has focused her philanthropy principally on financial aid for medical students: in addition to her longtime support of the Class of 1986 Medical Scholarship Fund, she was the first donor to make a pledge to the John Morgan Scholarship Fund and secure a matching gift through the Jordan Family Challenge. "It is worthwhile to me that medical students focus on their interests in advancing patient care, and be free from insurmountable debt," she says, while also emphasizing the importance of scholarship aid in attracting and retaining the most talented students.

She has served on the Perelman School of Medicine Board of Trustees as a member of the Executive Committee since 2002, and is a member of the Medical Alumni Advisory Council. Dr. Mazanet received the Perelman School of Medicine's Alumni Service Award in 2006.

 

Andrea Mitchell, CW'67, Co-Chair

Andrea Mitchell has been a network correspondent for NBC News in Washington, DC since 1978. She served as Chief White House Correspondent during the Reagan and Clinton administrations, has been the network's Chief Congressional Correspondent, and has held the position of Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent since 1994. She covers foreign policy, intelligence, and national security issues in the United States and abroad for all NBC News programs, and also hosts a daily program on politics and foreign policy on MSNBC.

Her broadcasting career began at Penn, where she was Program Director of WXPN while earning an undergraduate degree in English literature. She is a frequent speaker at University events for students and alumni, and returns to campus often to participate in forums and panel discussions. She has delivered a Baccalaureate address, has been Commencement speaker for the School of Arts and Sciences, and gave the keynote speech at the celebration of 125 Years of Women at Penn. She brought her MSNBC program to the Penn campus for a special broadcast during the 2008 presidential campaign. Most recently, she took part in the 2010 Silfen University Forum, "The Polarized Polis: The Future of Political Discourse in America."

Ms. Mitchell has said, "If I had not had a good liberal-arts education, I don't know that I would have been nearly the journalist that I hope I've been," and her philanthropic commitment to teaching and learning at Penn reflects this principle. She has been a generous supporter of Kelly Writers House and the Music Department Performance Fund, as well as the Music Building renovation, faculty support, and undergraduate student aid. In 2007, Ms. Mitchell and her husband Alan Greenspan, HON'98, endowed a Penn Integrates Knowledge professorship. The Andrea Mitchell University Professorship is held by Robert Ghrist, one of the world's leading applied mathematicians, who holds joint appointments in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Arts and Sciences.

A University Trustee since 1992, Ms. Mitchell serves on the Annenberg School Advisory Committee, and is a former member of the Board of Overseers of the School of Arts and Sciences. She is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Advisory Board (MARAB), and a member emerita of the Trustees' Council of Penn Women.

She is the author of a memoir, Talking Back…To Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels, published in 2005. Among other honors, she has received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Leonard Zeidenberg Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for her contributions to the protection of First Amendment freedoms, and the Gracie Award from the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation as the Outstanding Reporter of 2010. In 2002, she received the Alumni Award of Merit, the University of Pennsylvania's highest alumni honor.