SOURCE OF WEALTH: Berkshire Hathaway
FUNDING AREAS: Health and Medical Research, Global
OVERVIEW: Ajit Jain founded the Jain Foundation, a non-profit foundation seeking a cure for dysferlinopathy, which affects his son. According to available tax filings, the foundation awarded $2.2 million in grants in 2017.
BACKGROUND: Born in India in 1951, Ajit Jain earned an engineering degree at IIT Kharagpur and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He joined McKinsey & Co but later returned to India before his wife Tinku inspired a return to the United States. He joined Berkshire Hathaway in the mid-1980s and is president of The Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group.
ISSUES:
HEALTH: The Jain Foundation is a nonprofit focused on finding a cure for his son’s disease, dysferlinopathy—a type of muscular dystrophies caused by dysferlin protein deficiency. Dysferlinopathy is an orphan disease that afflicts approximately 5 people per million and receives little to no funding from traditional sources.
The foundation’s strategy includes, “funding and actively monitoring the progress of scientific research projects in key pathways towards a cure, providing financial and logistical support to promising drug candidates to accelerate them to clinical trials, funding clinical trials and studies, encouraging collaboration among scientists, and educating LGMD2B/Miyoshi patients about their disease and helping them with their diagnosis.”
The Jains have also made smaller donations to other health organizations such as St. Baldrick’s Foundation, Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, and the Child Mind Institute.
GLOBAL: The Jains are major supporters of the American India Foundation, which is “committed to catalyzing social and economic change in India and building a lasting bridge between the United States and India through high-impact interventions in education, livelihoods, public health, and leadership development.”
LOOKING FORWARD: Expect Jain to remain fully focused on this personal cause.
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