Susan Crown

“Aspen Community Foundation has developed into a genuine community foundation,” says Susan Crown, an officer of the Chicago investment firm Henry Crown and Company, which owns the Aspen Skiing Company in its diversified portfolio. Initially the Foundation derived its support solely from ski passes. “Today it’s widely supported by the greater community and its work is stewarded by an interesting and interested group of trustees.”

An enthusiastic proponent of the community foundation model, based on her work at the Chicago Community Trust twenty years ago, and currently serving as Chairman of the Arie and Ida Crown Memorial, Susan views the Donor Advised Fund as “the best of all worlds. Through the Donor Advised Fund, the SkiCo is able to support the basic mission of the Community Foundation, and can also direct funds to compelling program areas and organizations. Aspen Community Foundation is in a perfect position to bring a larger issue to public consciousness, and it can assemble and mobilize people who are able to act constructively.”

Susan Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, never forgot how his Eastern European parents struggled to make a new life in America, or all the people who helped him along his way to phenomenal success. According to his granddaughter, Henry Crown ardently believed that, “philanthropy is never an act of goodwill or altruism. People need to commit to the responsible protection of one another. It’s often a matter of luck whether an individual is in need of help or able to help.”

Susan learned not only from the modeling of her grandfather who passed away while she was in her thirties, but on her own at Yale University, New York University, and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She met her husband and father of their two children while they were both undergraduates at Yale, where she has served as a member of its governing body, the Yale Corporation, for the past twelve years.

A great believer in the value of America’s independent sector, which seeks to address issues that business and government do not and cannot respond to, Susan dedicates a considerable amount of time to non-governmental organizations. She served as Chairman for the Shoah Visual History Foundation; she works on an urban education initiative in Chicago; and her new challenge is as Chair of Facilities at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago for the $1 billion development of a state-of-the-art medical center. She quotes Newt Minnow, former head of the FCC, when she states that, “In the end your net worth has very little to do with what you’ve accumulated; it’s all about what you’ve given.”