#9 KENAN ŞAHİN
Amerıca’s Top Turkısh Gıver
Technologist and entrepreneur Dr. Kenan Şahin donated $100 million to his alma mater, MIT, in an unrestricted gift in 1999. This made him one of America’s top givers in BusinessWeek’s annual ranking Dr. Kenan Şahin.
of top philanthropists work. In Boston Magazine’s “The 50 Wealthiest Bostonians” list, Dr Şahin was ranked #20 with a worth of 904 million dollars.
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ave you ever heard that any Turkish-American donated $100 million to any institution in the United States? If your answer is no, you probably don’t know Dr. Kenan Şahin, 72, technologist and entrepreneur. As was described in MIT News bulletin, at the gala dinner and ball to celebrate the launch of MIT’s $1.5 billion capital campaign on November 6th, 1999, Dr. Şahin was supposed to be in China that Saturday. The trip was cancelled, so the former MIT student and faculty member went to MIT for the day’s programs, gala dinner and ball to celebrate the launch of MIT’s $1.5 billion capital campaign. At 9:15pm, he told MIT President Charles Vest he had something to say to the 500 people assembled for dinner amidst a sound-and-light show of gossamer sails and technological artifacts in Rockwell Cage, MIT’s basketball gym. Dr. Şahin was introduced by Vest, who said, “I really don’t know what he’s going to say.” He smiled shyly and said, “He really doesn’t know what I’m going to
24 • TurkofAmerica
say. Up until half an hour ago, I didn’t know what I was going to say.” He announced that he was donating $100 million to his alma mater, MIT, in an unrestricted gift. The gift was the largest ever received by MIT and one of the largest in higher education at that time. “If I had know that MIT would release a press release about the gift, I definitely would have asked them not to announce it,” Dr. Şahin says. Keeping a low profile is not easy and the reason for it varies from person to person; Dr. Şahin doesn’t want to be in front of public eye. “After MIT, I donated some money to Turkish universities but I will never disclose it,” he indicates. He became one of America’s top givers in BusinessWeek’s second annual ranking of top philanthropists work. He was ranked #46. So how did he earn that money to donate? Let’s go back in time a little. He was born in Aydın, Turkey in 1941 to a prominent Turkish family – his father Eyüp Şahin was both a Member of Parliament and a successful businessman. He got elected twice in the 1950