UVA Law Launches ‘Honor the Future’ Capital Campaign

The University of Virginia School of Law will officially launch its Honor the Future campaign Oct. 11 with a $400 million goal. As part of the broader $5 billion UVA campaign, the effort will position the school to thrive well into its third century.

“We have long benefited from the generosity of our alumni in supporting one of the most powerful educational experiences in the country,” Dean Risa Goluboff said. “But there are new challenges ahead that this campaign will help us meet, and new opportunities to grow programs and initiatives that expand upon the core strengths of our school and support the people who make UVA Law so unique.”

The Law School’s campaign will focus on four priorities:

• Scholarships and loan forgiveness, which will help attract talented and diverse students, remove barriers to accessing a legal education and enable careers in public service.
• Professorships to enable the Law School to attract, support and retain the faculty who are leaders in their fields and in the profession, transformative clinical practitioners and award-winning teachers.
• Programs and curricular initiatives that will prepare students for the future in a rapidly changing society, such as through investments in the Program in Law and Public Service, new initiatives in law and technology, and an expansion of our clinical and experiential programs.
• Unrestricted gifts — contributions made without limitation as to their use. These contributions power the school’s ability to deploy funds where they are needed most.

Luis Alvarez Jr. ’88, president and CEO of the Law School Foundation, said the school has “an amazing array of alumni leaders” serving as co-chairs for the campaign, including honorary co-chairs Martha Lubin Karsh ’81 (COL ’78) and Bruce A. Karsh ’80, who are the school’s first lifetime $50 million donors.

The co-chairs are:

J. Warren Gorrell Jr. ’79, CEO emeritus of Hogan Lovells, where he worked for more than three decades. Gorrell joined the firm’s predecessor Hogan & Hartson three days after graduating from the Law School and became the first equity partner to ascend to that role within six years. He went on to lead some of the nation’s most complex mergers and acquisitions transactions and IPO offerings involving real estate investment trusts and other real estate companies. Throughout his management career as chair of Hogan & Hartson and later as co-CEO of Hogan Lovells, Gorrell maintained an active practice — a rarity among law firm leaders.

Catherine M. Keating ’87, CEO of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, also served as president and CEO of Commonfund, a global nonprofit serving endowments, foundations and public-sector investors. She was Commonfund’s first female CEO. Before that, she spent nearly two decades at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where her various roles included head of Investment Management for the Americas and CEO of the U.S. Private Bank. She has been named among the “Most Powerful Women in Banking” and “Most Powerful Women in Finance” by American Banker. She serves on the UVA Law School Foundation Board of Trustees and delivered the 2017 UVA Law commencement address.

David C. Burke ’93, who also earned a B.S. from the McIntire School and an M.A. in international relations from UVA, is a co-founder and former CEO of Makena Capital Management, which manages $19 billion in assets from leading North American endowments and foundations. Burke remains a managing director and director of Makena, through which he leads the firm’s investment and operational activities. He was previously a managing director of the Stanford Management Co., which oversees the Stanford University endowment’s investments in private equity and venture capital. Currently, Burke serves on the advisory and corporate boards of more than a dozen private equity, venture capital and direct investments domestically and abroad. He has served on the boards of both the Law School Foundation and the University of Virginia Investment Management Co. In January 2019, he sponsored UVA Law students’ participation in the Human Rights Study Project, which included a trip to Nepal.

Dasha Smith ’98, executive vice president and global chief human resources officer for Sony Music Entertainment, previously worked at GCM Grosvenor, a global alternative asset management firm, where she served as managing director, a member of the office of the chairman and chief human resources officer. She also worked for five years at Time Inc., where she was head of employee relations and chief employment counsel. Her early career included stints in London and New York with firms such as Latham & Watkins and Covington & Burling. As an executive overseeing global human resources functions, Smith focuses on diversity as a competitive differentiator.

Honorary Co-Chairs: Bruce A. Karsh ’80 and Martha Lubin Karsh ’81

Bruce A. Karsh ’80 is co-founder, co-chair and chief investment officer of Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management, a global investment management company with $120 billion in assets under management. He serves on the executive board of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, which he and his wife, Martha Lubin Karsh ’81, co-own. Their record-breaking $44 million gift in 2018, to be fully funded by 2022, created the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, endowed professorships, and provided support to the school’s premier student scholarship program, now called the Karsh-Dillard Scholarships.

A leader in the nonprofit world and co-manager of the Karsh Family Foundation — which has contributed more than $250 million in education philanthropy — Martha co-founded the Los Angeles design firm Clark & Karsh and serves on the national board of the Knowledge is Power Program, the nation’s largest network of high-performing public charter schools. She is co-chair of the University-wide Honor the Future campaign and a trustee emerita of the UVA Law School Foundation.