Philanthropist Ann Lurie was born in Florida and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from the University of Florida.  Before starting her family, she worked in public health and pediatric intensive care nursing in rural Florida and at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She resides in Chicago where she is president of Lurie Investments; president and treasurer of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation; and founder and president of Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics, Inc., a registered US public charity.  Following the death of her husband, Robert H. Lurie in 1990, Ann devoted herself to raising their six children while distinguishing herself as a benefactor to a number of important causes.

She serves on the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University, and in concert with her commitment to medical research and child related medical issues, Ann endowed the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University where she continues to provide support and chairs the Advisory Board.  In 2010, she was appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor, Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University.  Also at Northwestern, she funded both the Diana, Princess of Wales Professorship in Cancer Research and a professorship in Oncology at the Lurie Cancer Center and committed the lead funding for the Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center of Northwestern University.

At Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago, she endowed a chair in Cancer Cell Biology and donated $1.3 million to fund the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS research.  In 2007, Ann pledged $100,000,000 to construct the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the new 23-story technologically advanced home of Children’s Memorial, scheduled to open June 9, 2012.  Lurie Children’s features 288 private patient rooms and is located adjacent to academic partners, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Prentice Women’s and Northwestern Memorial Hospitals and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.  Recently, Ann led fundraising efforts and co-chaired the Gala Preview of Lurie Children’s.

“When I was young, my mother encouraged me to “do a good deed daily.” Following her advice felt good then, and, now, many years later, it still feels good. I think of philanthropy as my selfish pleasure. What could be more rewarding than having the opportunity to give hope where none formerly existed, to feed the hungry, to help provide the tools to train doctors and scientists and ultimately save lives?”
— Ann Lurie

At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ann funded the construction of the Robert H. Lurie Engineering Center and the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Tower.  In an effort to promote a synergy between engineering and medicine, she endowed a faculty chair at the College of Engineering and contributed the major funding for the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Biomedical Engineering Building and the Robert H. Lurie Nanofabrication Facility.  With Chicago businessman Sam Zell, she established the Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Business School; and in tribute to her mother, also a nurse, she endowed the Marion Elizabeth Blue Professorship in Children and Families in the School of Social Work along with a matching challenge grant program to encourage the establishment of fellowships.

Ann serves on the National Honorary Committee of the National Osteoporosis Foundation and since 2009 she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health where she funds The Lurie Prize, an annual $100,000 award that recognizes the outstanding achievements of a promising young scientist in the area of biomedical research.   

Her gifts have enriched both the social services and the arts in Chicago.  She is founder and former president of the Board of Directors of Gilda’s Club, Chicago. She endowed the Lurie Garden and provided cornerstone funding for the Joan and Irving J. Harris Dance Theater, both at Chicago’s Millennium Park.  Ann’s lead gift launched the Greater Chicago Food Depository Campaign. She funded the Lurie Family Spay/Neuter Clinic at PAWS Chicago, permanently endowed a Christmas party for needy children and low-income seniors at St. Vincent DePaul Center and provided capital funding for the green roof at the headquarters of Access Living.  She annually sponsors 5 musicians who perform with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the training arm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Lurie founded and continues to fund and personally administer the operation of AID Village Clinics, established in 2002, offering comprehensive medical care and public health services, all free of charge, to a population of approximately 100,000 semi-nomadic pastoralists, mostly Maasai in rural southeastern Kenya.  A staff of 160, including physicians and a full spectrum of health professionals and support staff, all Kenyan, sees over 3300 patients per month and along with 3750+ HIV/AIDS patients on life-saving antiretroviral therapy, treats infectious disease as well as injuries from accidents and animal attacks and other acute and chronic conditions.  Medical and public health consultants from major US academic medical centers visit and confer with AID Village Clinics staff on a regular basis.  Conversely, Clinic staff travels to the US for training.

AID Village Clinics  operates from a 24-building fixed based complex that includes exam rooms, a laboratory, pharmacy, 48 bed in-patient unit, TB diagnostic and VCT counseling center, staff and visitor quarters, complete electronic medical records system, and state-of the art x-ray and ultra sound equipment.  Mobile clinics operate from two Airstream trailers outfitted with portable labs and exam rooms.  Home services and visits are conducted by trained Community Health Workers who travel by motorcycle for education and prevention outreach activities and to see patients who are too ill or too remote to come to the Clinic.      

As part of a 2007 CNN special “Where Have All the Parents Gone?”, correspondent Christiane Amanpour personally visited AID Village Clinics and reported, “Here in the heart of rural Africa in villages which have no electricity, no running water and no paved roads, someone has figured out how to win a battle in the war against AIDS.  We have come all the way down to Kenya’s Maasai country to the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro.  We’re here to meet the people who have figured a way out of Africa’s medical catastrophe.  What they are doing is amazing, in short, giving rural Africa 21^st century health care.  Ann Lurie has planned and paid for this clinic and the labs and all the high-tech medical clinics that the poor in Africa can only dream about. “ 

Ann’s commitment to global philanthropy includes supporting the UK charity, Riders for Health, which creates and sustains health care delivery systems in Africa.  In cooperation with Save the Children and ONE Love Africa, she funded construction of 30 rural schools in Ethiopia.  She supports and serves on the board of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, a US-based archaeological excavation on the Giza plateau; the Trust for African Rock Art; conservation, education, reforestation and health initiatives of the Maasailand Preservation Trust; an HIV/AIDS initiative on the Burma/Chinese border; and sponsors the WE-ACTx pediatric care program for HIV/AIDS patients in Rwanda.  She provided transportation and funding to a Children’s Memorial Hospital team to perform corrective surgery on pediatric patients with Extrahepatic Portal Hypertension in Nepal; and supports the research and advocacy work of Human Rights Watch in the Horn of Africa, including establishing a regional office in Nairobi.

In recent years, she has been honored with the Honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Michigan, Distinguished Philanthropist Award by the Chicago Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Jane Addams Making History Award from the Chicago History Museum and the Lifetime of Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League.  In spring, 2009, she received the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind, the Doctor of Public Service from the University of Florida, and the Doctor of Humane Letters from the Erikson Institute.  In March, 2010, she received Research America’s Raymond and Beverly Sackler Award for Sustained National Leadership. In May, 2011, she was chosen by the Chicago Consular Corps to receive the Global Citizen Award.

She has been recognized as a leading U.S. philanthropist by Worth, Forbes, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Life, a supplement to the New York Times, Crain’s Business Chicago, Chicago Magazine, Town and Country, Business Week and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.  Most recently, in the March 2012 issue, Chicago Magazine ranked Ann among the top in their listing of “The Power 100.”

“In the early years of the 21st century, we anticipate a remarkable expansion of medical knowledge followed by the enhanced ability to treat as well as prevent disease. Northwestern University can be a leading participant in these discoveries but only if we aggressively expand the research initiative through collaboration between private and public philanthropy under strong University and Medical School leadership."   
— Ann Lurie - 2001 

(Etched in stone, foyer of Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Building Chicago)