Thomas J. White

Since its beginning, Tom White enabled Partners In Health to do “whatever it takes” to improve the lives and health of patients in vulnerable communities around the world, whether financing the construction of a small clinic in Cange, purchasing a microscope, or paying $30,000 per patient for PIH’s first multidrug-resistant tuberculosis program. The owner and president of construction company J.F. White Contracting Co., he helped found PIH with his first $1 million donation and then systematically gave away his wealth—tens of millions of dollars—by selling his company, his assets, and his house to continue supporting PIH projects aimed at alleviating human suffering and poverty. He died peacefully in Boston Jan. 7, 2011.