COLLEGETOWN GIFT: $25M donation for Cornell center
The Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management will expand into Collegetown, thanks to a $25 million gift from a Cornell University alumnus.
The Graduate School of Management has expanded in recent years with the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA in New York City and the Cornell Tsinghua MBA/FMBA in Beijing. Now, the multimillion-dollar donation from "staunch supporter and longtime adviser" David Breazzano, class of 1980, will allow the school to expand in Ithaca, according to a news release from Cornell University.
Breazzano's donation — one of the largest ever made to business education at Cornell — will support a new, state-of-the-art, six-story classroom and office building, which is under construction at 209-215 Dryden Road. The gift also provides $4 million for the Breazzano Family Faculty Excellence Fund and substantial current-use support via the Johnson Annual Fund.
“Dave’s extraordinary gift will enhance the quality and capacity of our business programs. It recognizes the need for an additional facility to launch Johnson on its next phase of growth and is a wholehearted endorsement of Johnson’s faculty,” Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings III said in a news release. “We are grateful for Dave’s vote of confidence in Johnson’s future and its role in the Cornell College of Business.”
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Breazzano is the co-founder, president and chief investment officer of DDJ Capital Management and the chairman of the Johnson Advisory Council. His sons are also members of the Johnson community, the news release said. Two are Johnson alumni — Jeremy Breazzano (2011), and Michael Breazzano (2013) — and the third, Matthew Breazzano (2016), will graduate this month.
“Johnson helped me discover my passion and aptitude, then helped me get my first job, and I did well at it because of my education,” David Breazzano said. “That solid foundation has helped me throughout my career. So I have a sense of gratitude. And I always knew I wanted to give back when I was in a position to do so.”
The gift was announced Monday night by Dean Soumitra Dutta at the Johnson's premier gala event, Party on the Park in New York City. Dutta will assume his new role as dean of the Cornell College of Business later this year.
To recognize the gift, Dutta said Cornell leadership will recommend the Cornell Board of Trustees name the MBA program's new Collegetown building the Breazzano Family Center for Business Education.
“Dave is an extraordinary leader of the Johnson alumni community,” Dutta said. “He has supported greater collaboration among schools at Cornell and believes the synergies that will result from the Cornell College of Business will benefit all. We are deeply grateful for his willingness to provide such a generous investment in support of Johnson’s continued excellence in business education.”
Johnson will lease the building from the developer and owner, 209-215 Dryden Road LLC. The 76,000-square-foot building is expected to open in the summer 2017 and will be on the tax rolls.
The Breazzano Family Center for Business Education will have four large, interactive, tiered classrooms plus a flat-floor, flexible classroom that can be subdivided into two separate classrooms, according to Bob Libby, professor of accounting and faculty lead for the project.
The building will be modern with an emphasis on glass and natural wood. The building will include two high-definition broadcast studios and accommodate student project teams in 42 breakout rooms and 30 open spaces, all with glass walls overlooking a four-story atrium that will be a central gathering spot designed to accommodate a wide variety of events, the news release said. Floors four through six will house more than 200 professional and administrative staff.
While conceived primarily to support Johnson’s growth in programs, the Breazzano Family Center also will serve a broader cross-section of business students on the Ithaca campus via its lecture halls, breakout rooms and event space. “This is the first major gift since the creation of the Cornell College of Business,” said Breazzano, who believes the gift will underscore “the value of combining the synergies of the schools.”
Dutta said the Breazzano Family Center will make it easier for students in all three Cornell College of Business schools in Ithaca — Dyson, Johnson and the Hotel School — to participate in activities at Cornell Tech.
Breazzano said Johnson is "clearly at an inflection point" and said he believes the combination of schools in the Cornell College of Business will create a new set of synergies.
“We have a lot of innovative, exciting initiatives happening in real time. Cornell Tech is transformative; it’s the integration of business acumen and technological innovation. It’s the future,” Breazzano said in a news release.
At the same time, he believes it’s up to Johnson alumni and the entire Johnson community to support the initiatives the school has undertaken.
“We have to run 110 percent in the right direction with the right support to make this all happen,” Breazzano said. “It’s important for all of us — for the pride of our school and for selfish reasons — to ensure that Cornell remains an elite business school. Because that enhances the value of our diploma, and we all want to be proud that we have a Cornell diploma.”
Follow Kelsey O'Connor on Twitter @ijkoconnor.