NEW YORK – On October 16th, Andreas Dracopoulos, Co-President of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), was honored with the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Humanitarian Award at the 12th Annual NYSCF Gala and Science Fair, in New York.
Past recipients of the NYSCF Humanitarian Award include the world renowned architect Frank Gehry and pioneering artists Chuck Close and Christo.
Roy Geronemus, MD, was also be honored during the event with the NYSCF Leadership Award, and Clifford Ross received the NYSCF Arts Leadership Award.
The New York Stem Cell Foundation was founded in 2005, with the mission to cure the major diseases of our time through stem cell research. In addition to conducting innovative stem cell research in their own laboratories, NYSCF also supports and convenes global stem cell thought leaders and the broader stem cell community.
The SNF has supported NYSCF most recently via support for the organization’s new laboratories and headquarters, the NYSCF Research Institute in New York. The central corridor of the facility, which showcases NYSCF’s research developments, has been named “Τhe Stavros Niarchos Foundation Gallery”.
Mr. Dracopoulos has stated regarding the SNF’s support of the NYSCF “When a proposal comes to our Foundation we always use two main criteria, the one is to add value to society at large and number two are the people involved committed, ethical, professional, able. I think in this case it was an easy yes on both cases. We love the spirit of collaboration and the openness and the fact that there is research not just for the sake of research itself but more about finding ways to accelerate to cure diseases.”
For more information about the event and the work of the NYSCF, click here.
Follows Paul Goldberger’s Speech:
(Paul Goldberger served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker and Dean of the Parsons school of design)
I first met Andreas Dracapoulos a decade ago, when I was advising The New York Public Library on the choice of an architect for a new project, and I was told that a member of the library’s board wanted to meet with me to get a briefing on the project. So I went to Andreas’s office, where he asked the most focused, most informed, and most serious questions of any board member. That’s how I began to learn about how this remarkable man goes about his business—he gathers the most information he can, and unlike many foundation executives he is determined to get it right from the source, which is why I was summoned to his office. He wants, more than anything else, to be informed.
But once properly informed, what is truly remarkable is what he, and the organization he has built, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, do with that information. In a short time they have had an extraordinary impact on philanthropy, in New York and around the world. Andreas Dracapoulos is more than well informed; he has been imaginative and fearless in his philanthropy. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation took a chance on The New York Stem Cell Foundation when it was a new organization, with a bold idea but a short track record; when the track record got longer, the support became even greater, and now NYSCF is proud to have the Stavros Niarchos Foundation name on the Gallery adjacent to its new laboratory on West 54th Street.
The boldness of Andreas Dracapoulos extends far beyond his support of new organizations like The New York Stem Cell Foundation; the Stavros Niarchos Foundation has been a great supporter of culture as well as science, and underwrote the entire cost of planning and constructing the new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, an ambitious project by the architect Renzo Piano, for which Andreas was the model of an active, engaged client. He oversaw every aspect of this $861-million project—slightly larger than the budget for the new NYSCF lab you just heard about!—protecting it under the most challenging circumstances during Greece’s period of great political turmoil. The result is one of the important buildings of our time.
In gratitude for his support, but also in appreciation of his imaginative and courageous leadership in philanthropy, The New York Stem Cell Foundation is pleased to honor Andreas Dracapoulos as a 2017 Stem Cell Hero. May we invite him to the stage to receive the NYSCF Humanitarian Award.
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