PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Warren Alpert Foundation, founded by Xtra Mart owner Warren Alpert, donated $100 million to Brown University’s School of Medicine, the Providence Journal reports. The donation will enlarge and enhance its medical school, which will be renamed the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. This gift will send benefits throughout the entire state, university and public officials say.
The foundation doles out grants for medical research and education, in addition to giving an annual award to a top medical researcher. Warren Alpert is the founder, chairman and sole owner of Warren Equities Inc., which today sells fuel and groceries in more than 400 Xtra Mart convenience stores in the Northeast, and has interests in real estate and transportation, posting more than $1 billion in sales each year.
The donation is the largest the foundation has ever given, and it will pay for a new building for the medical school, scholarships for medical students, two endowed professorships, faculty recruitment and biomedical research, the newspaper reports.
“We hope to build this into one of the great medical schools in the country,” said Herbert Kaplan, president of the Warren Alpert Foundation and president and CEO of Warren Equities. “Warren Alpert had always been fascinated with medical education. … He never wanted to be a doctor himself, but he always thought that was the way to help mankind.”