Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan want to help build a safer and healthier world for their daughter, Max. Photo courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan aren’t willing to just imagine a better world for their newborn daughter to inherit – they’re helping build it. In a birth announcement posted to Facebook, they laid out a vision for the future to ensure their daughter, Maxima, and other children will live in a world that’s safer, healthier and more connected.
Written as an open letter to Max, the announcement pledged the couple’s willingness to give 99% of their Facebook shares to charitable organizations over the course of their lives. Through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, they intend to make those shares, which add up to about $45 billion, pave the way for meaningful change globally and locally. The couple laid out priorities for the initiative, including curing disease, encouraging personalized learning, connecting people and building stronger communities.
While all four prongs are part of the world the couple envisions for their child, curing disease might be a particular interest to Chan, a pediatrician. Noting that people spend about 50 times more treating illness than making investments to stop disease in the first place, they are calling for a refocusing of priorities. Their hope is to help find cures for heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases.
The new parents acknowledge money alone won’t make their dreams materialize. To build the future they see, they’ll need support from the global community.
A few weeks before Max’s birth, Priscilla and Mark took a morning to reflect and record their hopes for their daughter and all children of her generation.
Posted by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative on Tuesday, December 1, 2015
“We can make progress towards these opportunities only by standing on the shoulders of experts — our mentors, partners and many incredible people whose contributions built these fields,” the announcement says. “And we only focus on serving this community and this mission because we are surrounded by loving family, supportive friends and amazing colleagues. We hope you will have such deep and inspiring relationships in your life too.”
Chan and Zuckerberg are no strangers to philanthropic giving. The two donated $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation in October 2014 to fight Ebola. They also gave $75 million to San Francisco General Hospital to help purchase equipment and technology at the new public hospital. Chan is also launching a private school in California for low-income children. The school will give them healthcare access along with their education.
Zuckerberg and Chan aren’t the only Silicon Valley power couples transforming fortunes into action. Cari Tuna and Dustin Moskovitz, also a Facebook co-founder, have also pledged to give away much of their wealth to causes that will benefit future generations. Napster’s Sean Parker helped fund a new center at Stanford University to cure allergies. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin and his ex-wife, biologist Anne Wojcicki, have pledged millions to battling Parkinson’s disease.
Creating a better world is a tall order. But as more people step forward to make it happen, small victories may very well lead to larger ones. As Zuckerberg and Chan explain, “We love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children.”
With that in mind, they’re focusing their efforts on the four areas they believe will have the most meaningful impact.
