R Todd Stravitz

In 2022 Stravitz made arrangements for VCU to receive a $104 million gift from his family’s foundation, the Barbara Brunckhorst Foundation, advancing the new Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at VCU. The gift is the largest in the university’s history, and the largest publicly shared gift for liver research in U.S. history. When Stravitz was 3 years old, his mother proclaimed that he would be a doctor instead of joining the family business, Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc., and the idea stuck. Stravitz earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary in 1982 before attending medical school at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine. There, he trained at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, the country’s oldest operating — and first — public hospital. Stravitz is an heir to the Boar’s Head Provisions Co. Inc. fortune. His mother, Barbara Brunckhorst, died in late 2020. Her father, Frank Brunckhorst, founded the delicatessen products company, which is now based in Florida, in 1905. A Virginia native who lives in Richmond, Stravitz is a co-executor of his mother’s estate.