The JPB Foundation

The JPB Foundation’s biggest grants have been a $25 million gift to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and an extra $2 million donation to the Picower Institute’s innovation fund. Tax records show the JPB Foundation has been funded by $1.2 billion in contributions in 2011 and 2012 from the estate of Jeffry Picower, the money left over after Barbara Picower agreed to pay $7.2 billion in the biggest civil forfeiture proceeding ever. Barbara Picower appears to have resumed supporting some of the nation’s top brain researchers by building consortiums of scientists who agree to collaborate together on their research. Paul Greengard, a professor at Rockefeller Univeristy who won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 2000, is on the JPB Foundation’s advisory board. In fact, the new JPB Foundation looks very much like the old Picower empire. April Freilich is the treasurer of The JPB Foundation, and one of its four trustees is William Zabel, the longtime lawyer for the Picowers who is a founding partner of the big law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel. Zabel was also a trustee of the Picower Foundation. One difference between the new Picower foundation and its predecessor is that The JPB Foundation does not appear to focus on educational causes like The Picower Foundation did. In addition to medical research, the JPB Foundation is focusing on poverty and the environment. The JPB Foundation’s mission statement is “to enhance the quality of life in the United States through transformational initiatives that promote the health of our communities by creating opportunities for those living in poverty, enabling pioneering medical research, and enriching and sustaining our environment.” The Picower Foundation for years had its assets invested in Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. The Picower Foundation withdrew $290 million from the Ponzi scheme between 1995 and 2008, and made $160 million in charitable grants in the six years before Madoff’s arrest, court documents show. Where is Barbara Picower putting her foundation’s more than $2 billion of assets now? Blackstone Group. The JPB Foundation has invested in a Blackstone real estate fund, tax records show. It also has invested in several mutual funds, including the Dodge & Cox International Stock Fund and the TCW Emerging Markets Income Fund. Gerald McNamara, a former Goldman Sachs managing director who was a trustee of The Picower Foundation when it was investing with Madoff, is chief investment officer of The JPB Foundation.