Most Powerful Women 2017

Patti Harris
CEO, Bloomberg Philanthropies
2015 Rank: 32

ENDOWMENT $7.2 billion

NYC IMPACT Board member, National September 11th Memorial Foundation, Public Art Fund and Performing Arts Center at the WTC

Patricia Harris has been giving away Michael Bloomberg’s fortune since 1994, when she started at Bloomberg LP. But the pace of philanthropy has picked up in recent years, with particular benefit to New York’s tech and culture sectors.

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ giving has nearly doubled since 2011, to $600 million last year. The eighth-largest endowment in the U.S., it is focused on the arts, education, the environment, government innovation, health care and whatever tickles Bloomberg’s fancy, the foundation last month donated $60 million to The Shed, the new cultural center at Hudson Yards, adding to a previous $15 million contribution. And a $100 million gift to the new Cornell Tech campus will come to fruition this fall, when the Bloomberg Center—the first academic building on Roosevelt Island—will open.

Harris has long been the behind-the-scenes consigliere to the billionaire former mayor, first as Bloomberg LP’s head of public and government affairs, then as first deputy mayor for 12 years before leading Bloomberg Philanthropies.

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