Lynn Schusterman (born January 21, 1939) is an American philanthropist. She is the co-founder (along with her late husband Charles) and chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and founder of several other philanthropic initiatives including the Schusterman-Israel Foundation, the ROI Community and the Jerusalem Season of Culture.
Biography
Lynn Schusterman was born to a secular, German-Jewish family on January 21, 1939 at Menorah Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. She was raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She has two younger sisters. Her mother, Amelia Mayer, was the daughter of Moses Emmanuel Mayer and Helen Loewen Mayer, of Iowa and Kansas, respectively. Her father, Wes Rothschild, was a brother of Louis Rothschild who served in the Eisenhower Cabinet. Her parents divorced at an early age and she was raised by Harold Josey who ran an investment company called H.I. Josey & Company. Although Jewish, her family also celebrated Christmas and Easter. She graduated from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
In 1962, she married Charles Schusterman, who was also Jewish although of Russian-Jewish origin. Charles grew up in Tulsa, the son of Sarah Goldstein, a Jewish emigrant from Riga, Latvia, and Sam Schusterman, a Jewish emigrant from Minsk, Belarus, who was in the used oilfield pipe equipment business. Charles graduated from the University of Oklahoma. Charles and his brother later founded their own oil and gas company and then after dividing the business, Charles developed his portion of the company into the Samson Investment Company (named after his father), which eventually became one of the largest gas exploration and production companies in the country. Charles, now a billionaire, was diagnosed with leukemia in 1983 and died in 2000.
Source: