Michael Milken

Mike Milken has been at the forefront of successful initiatives in medical research, education, public health and access to capital for more than five decades. Fortune called him “The Man Who Changed Medicine.” In 1982, he formalized his philanthropy by co-founding the Milken Family Foundation, and a decade later founded the Milken Institute. In addition to its annual Global Conference in Los Angeles, the Milken Institute hosts more than 250 events annually, including major conferences in Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Japan, London, Washington, D.C. and Mexico City. Milken also founded and chairs FasterCures, which works to speed progress against all life-threatening diseases, and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, which was established in 2014. His latest book, "Faster Cures: Accelerating the Future of Health," chronicles his personal journey and progress in medical research and public health. The Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream – housed in an historic Washington, DC building complex across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and Treasury – celebrates the ideal that everyone, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the opportunity to pursue a meaningful life.

As a financier, Milken revolutionized modern capital markets by pricing and rewarding risk more efficiently; the thousands of companies he financed created millions of jobs. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, he earned his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He and his wife Lori have been married since 1968 and have been members of the Giving Pledge since the organization’s founding in 2010; they have three children and 10 grandchildren.