Donald George Fisher (September 3, 1928 – September 27, 2009) was an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He co-founded the Gap Inc. clothing stores with his wife Doris F. Fisher.

Early life and education

Fisher was born in San Francisco, California, to a Jewish family, the eldest of three sons of Aileen Fisher (née Emanuel) and Sydney Fisher, a cabinetmaker. He spent his childhood in the then-middle-class Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco. that his mother inherited after her father died.

Fisher was a founding Board Member of the Presidio Trust (the public corporation that runs the Presidio of San Francisco), a post nominated by the President of the United States. He married Doris Feigenbaum in 1953, and was a long-time member of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.

He was a non-executive director of Vodafone from 1999 to 2000.

Philanthropy

Fisher was active in several public education causes, including being a major contributor to KIPP charter schools—a national network of low-income, high-achieving college preparatory public charter schools: he was the chairman of the board of trustees of the KIPP Foundation, the non-profit central organization of the KIPP network. He was also a contributor to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice, a statewide coalition of California business leaders and others who support education reform. Fisher also served on the California State Board of Education. Fisher was a lifelong benefactor of his alma mater, Berkeley; he endowed two eponymous centers—the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics and the Fisher Center for Business Analytics—at the Haas School. He donated to the school's building campaigns and to other campus causes, including the athletics department; Haas' Fisher Gate is named in his and his wife's honor. In 1986, the Haas School named him Alumnus of the Year, and, in 2007, he was honored as the Alumnus of the Year by Berkeley's California Alumni Association. Fisher and his family also donated a generous sum of money to Princeton University in 2006, and the Fisher Hall dormitory at Princeton's new residential college, Whitman College, is named for him. He has also donated to charter schools and museums in San Francisco, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and paid for public sculptures in San Francisco.

In July 2009, Fisher announced that he and his wife were abandoning their efforts to build the museum at San Francisco's Presidio, stating "Doris and I will take some time to consider the future of our collection and other possible locations for a museum, which could include other sites within the Presidio and elsewhere." In September 2009, Donald and Doris Fisher decided to enter into a partnership with SFMOMA to display the collection.

Awards and honors

  • Philanthropy Hall of Fame
  • 1991: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
  • 2011: California Hall of Fame

Death

One day after the San Francisco Chronicle article on the SFMOMA partnership, the Chronicle reported that Fisher died of cancer at home on Sunday morning, September 27, 2009.

References

  • GAP Official Website
  • Don Fisher Daily Telegraph obituary
  • Gap Inc. Don Fisher biography
  • KIPP Foundation