Carol and Howard Anderson
Your gift at work:
Logical conclusions
When Carol Anderson learned that Beth Israel Deaconess was in the planning stages of a transformative philanthropic campaign, she knew that she and her husband, Howard, would be at the head of the line to do their part. The Andersons immediately settled on a $1 million gift to the medical center to support its strategic objectives, but they also saw it as an opportunity to pay tribute to someone who, for them, personified the values the hospital was built on. “We both said, ‘The answer is very logical—we do it in honor of Harold,” Mrs. Anderson recalls.
The Harold in question would be Harold Solomon, M.D., the Andersons’ primary care physician, who is also a leading expert on hypertension and its associated risk factors. In clinical and academic practice for more than three decades, Solomon has garnered a loyal following of patients who continually sing his praises. “He’s an incredibly talented physician,” says Mrs. Anderson, “and at the same time, he’s one of the most caring and thoughtful people we know. He’s a guy who really loves his patients, and he goes to extraordinary lengths to look after them.”
That a doctor who is something of a fixture in the Boston community would earn the respect of the Andersons is hardly surprising. Both are involved in the volunteer leadership of institutional icons across the city: Mrs. Anderson at the Boston Foundation and Mr. Anderson at the Museum of Science and WGBH. Founder of a high-tech research and consulting firm, Mr. Anderson also teaches on a pro bono basis at MIT’s Sloane School of Management as a way for him to nurture the next generation of Boston entrepreneurs.
But Carol Anderson’s ties to BIDMC run particularly deep, with her path to membership on the BIDMC Board of Directors having been founded on personal philosophy and family relationships. In an unusual turn of events, Mrs. Anderson actually recruited herself to the medical center’s lay leadership when her work as a venture capitalist in the medical device and health care service industries brought the issue of health equity to her attention. “I became concerned that some underserved populations in Boston might not be receiving exemplary health care even though they lived in a national health care Mecca,” she notes. Mrs. Anderson decided that she must offer her time and skills to an institution that was working to address this problem. “I could have chosen the Community Benefits Committee of any of the major hospitals in Boston, but I chose to approach BIDMC because of my knowledge of the hospital and affection for it,” she says, noting that the medical center has a legacy of inclusiveness.
For the Andersons, the opportunity to repay BIDMC for its unique brand of care with not only knowledge and expertise but a significant gift is the culmination of a family relationship with the medical center that has endured for generations. Mrs. Anderson says that despite their passion for the institution, none of their kin had been able to give back in this way previously. “It wasn’t a matter of desire, there just wasn’t the capacity,” she says. “Now, as a member of the family who has the capacity and is extremely grateful to the medical center for the care that it provided my grandparents and my parents, I want to be supportive in whatever way I can.”
No one at BIDMC is more touched by all the ways the Andersons sustain the medical center’s mission than Harold Solomon. “I am grateful and honored that Carol and Howard have chosen to support BIDMC in this way,” he says of their donation in his name. “Their generous contribution is matched by the time and effort Carol devotes to BIDMC as a director. This gift will greatly enhance the training programs in the Department of Medicine for years to come.”
While some philanthropists enjoy the sense of fulfillment giving can provide, the Andersons prefer to savor the potential impact of their generosity. “I don’t think it’s about me or my husband in any way at all,” says Mrs. Anderson. “We’re people who have been very blessed in life, and this is just one of the ways that we’re able to give back to the community. But it’s not about how it makes us feel. It is the right thing to do—to allow an organization that we think so highly of to continue and expand its mission.”
