Ann Ziff has been helping me and my charities provide surgeries for children for almost 30 years.
Along the way she has become a very generous, kind and loyal friend.
It all began when I had the good fortune to sit across from Ann at a sit-down dinner for 120 people at her spectacular 65,000 square foot home in Aspen.
Her genius husband Bill was the Founder/Chairman/CEO of Ziff-Davis, a tremendously successful tech publishing empire.
Over dinner I learned that before she was married to a billionaire, Ann was a social worker in the Bronx. She was the most down-to-earth, smart, engaging and charming billionaire’s wife I had ever met. (And the first. )
I told Ann all about Operation Smile, our charity that was providing free surgeries for inner-city children in New York City. I could see the social worker side of Ann come out as I told her about the desperately poor children we were helping. She said, “If you ever need any help…”
It took me two years before I took Ann up on her offer. After I merged my Operation Smile charity with an Operation Smile in Virginia, I had to help organize a New York City fundraiser.
For years, Operation Smile Virginia was raising just $60,000 a year in New York City.
Ann told me she was happy to help, and we put together a sold-out, charity dinner on the Intrepid battleship that raised more than $700,000.
10 times more than they had raised the year before.
That was the first time I witnessed the “impact” of Ann Ziff.
The next year, we put together a black-tie fundraiser at The Pierre for Operation Smile that honored Ralph Larsen, the Chairman of Johnson and Johnson. Once again, the “impact” of Ann Ziff was felt as that event raised $1.2 million.
Most of the attendees and donations came from Ann’s friends and contacts.
She knows EVERYONE in New York City and she served on all the biggest and most respected boards: Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Opera, The Natural History Museum, The Met, etc.
Ann was an integral part of a major transformation we helped bring to Operation Smile Virginia that increased donations by many millions of dollars a year.
As part of that, Ann agreed to join the Operation Smile Board and she brought extensive experience from all the New York City Boards she was on.
A few years later, when I came up with the idea for The Smile Train, Ann was an enthusiastic supporter and even came with us to China to pitch the Minister of Railways.
She was a big help in launching The Smile Train and vital to the success of our black-tie Smile Train Project fundraiser at which we conducted a live cleft surgery during the fundraiser.
Shortly afterwards, when two young children died needlessly on an Operation Smile mission to Beijing, several of us resigned from the Op Smile Board and took the Smile Train Project with us.
Ann joined us and agreed to serve as the first Chairman of Smile Train.
She was a rock of Gibraltar during our challenging first few years when we went through two Executive Directors.
With Ann’s support and help, I agreed to be an Interim President of Smile Train. Over the following decade, Ann was one of our most generous and loyal donors and supporters.
She introduced and promoted Smile Train to her vast circle of very successful, wealthy and generous friends including opera superstar Renee Fleming, Pavarotti, Bette Midler, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Michael Greene, Peter Gelb, Carly Simon, Barbara Walters, Cindy Adams, Ruth Kwok, Ronnie Chan, to name just a few.
When my Smile Train co-founder Charles Wang launched a board-room coup to takeover Smile Train, Ann did everything she could to try and stop him.
Wang had recruited one of Ann’s close friends who was a Smile Train board member, to help him with the takeover but Ann intervened.
After we all left Smile Train and started WonderWork, Ann continued to support us and became one of our major WonderWork donors.
She even loaned us $1 million to help us get up and running.
Today Ann is the Chairman of The Metropolitan Opera and doing a great job.
I look back and think how lucky we were to have Ann join our boards at Operation Smile, Smile Train and WonderWork.
How lucky we were to receive so many donations from Ann that paid for thousands of surgeries.
And how lucky I am to have a friend like her.
