Rishi Sunak, a graduate of Oxford and Stanford universities, loves learning and education for himself and wants to empower others. He and his wife Akshata Murthy, who is also the daughter of N.R. Narayana Murthy, the billionaire founder of Infosys and renowned Indian writer and educator Sudhi Murthy have made many donations to educational institutions over the years.
The duo have a lab named after them, the Murty Sunak Quantitative and Computing Lab (QCL) at Claremont McKenna College (MCM). Akshata studied Economics and French at CMS, and the lab created under her and Sunaka’s name helps integrate computer science and data science across the spectrum of humanities disciplines: social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities.
$3 million in CMC
In 2018, the duo donated $3 million to the college, where Akshata is also now a trustee. QCL aims to empower students who may not have a natural level of comfort with mathematical or computational concepts, but seek to improve their abilities in the application of data and statistics. Murthy has been a member of the Claremont McKenna Board of Trustees since 2011.
Donation of £100,000 to Winchester College
The duo also donated more than £100,000 to Winchester College, where Sunak began his education. Sunak studied philosophy, politics and economics at Winchester College, Oxford. He was also a warden in the college.
The 2020 School Journal also listed him as a benefactor who has donated more than £100,000. This amount has been donated to “many charitable and philanthropic causes over the years” and has been used to “help fund scholarships for children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to go to Winchester,” according to the college’s website.
A “generous” donation to Stanford
After graduating from Winchester, Sukan went on to study for a Master of Business Administration degree at Stanford University on a Fulbright scholarship. It was at Stanford that he met his future sage Akshatha Murthy. Sukan’s father-in-law, NR Narayana Murthy, is a member of the Stanford Business School’s advisory board.
Four years after Murthy and Sunak married in Bengaluru in 2009, they made a “generous” donation to Stanford’s business school to fund a fellowship in social innovation. The amount, however, is not disclosed.
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In 2013, after their contribution, Stanford said that “their investment will help fund the Social Innovation Fellowships (SIF) program, which provides financial and advisory support through a competitive application process to students and recent graduates who have a clear, innovative and well-developed vision for a solution a specific social or environmental problem and a commitment to create a successful non-profit organization to implement their proposed innovation.”
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