Media Releases

Joseph Rotman leaves $30 million legacy gift to Rotman School of Management

April 6, 2016

Gift strengthens School’s role as a leader in innovative management education

Toron­to, ON — The estate of Joseph Rot­man is mak­ing a land­mark $30 mil­lion gift to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment.  The gift will help the Rot­man School, already one of the lead­ing glob­al brands in man­age­ment edu­ca­tion, con­tin­ue to be at the fore­front of trans­form­ing man­age­ment edu­ca­tion and research.

This lat­est gift from Joseph and San­dra Rot­man makes them the most gen­er­ous bene­fac­tors in the University’s his­to­ry, fol­low­ing numer­ous sig­nif­i­cant gifts over the past 20 years.  This new $30 mil­lion gift will be matched by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to in order to estab­lish a $45 mil­lion Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund as well as pro­vide addi­tion­al sup­port to the School’s high­est pri­or­i­ties such as schol­ar­ships, fac­ul­ty posi­tions and infra­struc­ture invest­ments. The Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund will act as a “ven­ture fund” for the Rot­man School, used to fund bold and inno­v­a­tive ini­tia­tives to con­tin­ue to trans­form man­age­ment edu­ca­tion and to increase the impact of the School’s stu­dents and new think­ing.  The Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund was con­ceived by Joseph Rot­man in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the lead­ers of the School short­ly before he died.

“The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is immense­ly proud of the rise of the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment to the top ranks of busi­ness schools world­wide. We hearti­ly sup­port the School’s aspi­ra­tions for con­tin­ued excel­lence and applaud Joe Rotman’s bril­liant vision for a cat­a­lyst fund. It will quick­ly stim­u­late and dri­ve oppor­tu­ni­ties for major con­tri­bu­tions to nation­al issues such as pros­per­i­ty, inno­va­tion, and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment,” says Prof. Mer­ic Gertler, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to.

“More than 20 years ago, Sandy and Joe believed that Cana­da need­ed a world class man­age­ment school, which was the begin­ning of their com­mit­ment to the Rot­man School and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to,” said Prof. Tiff Mack­lem, Dean of the Rot­man School.  “With their sup­port, the School under­went a remark­able peri­od of growth led by my pre­de­ces­sor Roger Mar­tin. Today with this new sup­port from the Rot­man fam­i­ly, we will take the next leap for­ward with more intre­pid think­ing, inno­v­a­tive and trans­for­ma­tive pro­grams, and an enhanced com­mit­ment to expe­ri­en­tial edu­ca­tion and life­long learn­ing. We express our deep grat­i­tude for Sandy and Joe’s vision, fore­sight and endur­ing sup­port.”

The Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund will help the School con­tin­ue to fos­ter inno­va­tion to enable stu­dents to access pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined inno­va­tions in busi­ness edu­ca­tion, to enable fac­ul­ty to con­duct more ground-break­ing research and to spur the deliv­ery of a trans­for­ma­tive stu­dent expe­ri­ence and life­long alum­ni engage­ment. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund will sup­port ini­tia­tives in the School’s three areas of aca­d­e­m­ic emphasis—entrepreneurship and inno­va­tion, a glob­al mind­set, and lead­er­ship in finan­cial man­age­ment and good gov­er­nance. It will seed intre­pid think­ing on the most press­ing prob­lems of our time.

The Rot­man School has already reached a tremen­dous lev­el of suc­cess. In Jan­u­ary, the School’s fac­ul­ty was ranked third in the world for its research by the Finan­cial Times.  Many of the School’s research cen­tres and hubs such as the Mar­tin Pros­per­i­ty Insti­tute, the Clark­son Cen­tre for Board Effec­tive­ness, and the new Behav­iour­al Eco­nom­ics in Action at Rot­man have achieved glob­al promi­nence in their fields. In addi­tion, the School’s inno­v­a­tive labs includ­ing the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab, Self Devel­op­ment Lab, Design­Works, and the BMO Finan­cial Group Finance Research and Trad­ing Lab are deliv­er­ing unique oppor­tu­ni­ties for expe­ri­en­tial edu­ca­tion and per­son­al­ized devel­op­ment for stu­dents. The Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund will allow us to scale up our most suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tives and imag­ine new inno­va­tions.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416.946.3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca

Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool

Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool