Sanford Diller

The son of Jewish immigrants from Austria who had settled in San Francisco, Diller graduated from the University of California, Berkeley[4] and then graduated with a J.D. from the Hastings College of the Law.[5] After law school, Diller began acquiring and developing real estate in the mid-1960s.[3] In 1965, he founded the Prometheus Real Estate Group.[3] Prometheus grew to become the San Francisco Bay area's largest closely held owner of apartments with over 11,000 owned units and is valued at $2.3 billion.[3] Prometheus is owned by Diller and his wife through a revocable trust.[3]

In 2002, the Helen Diller Family Program in Jewish Studies donated $5 million to establish an endowment for a visiting Israeli scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley.[6] In 2003, the Dillers donated $35 million to fund The Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Care Center at the UC San Francisco complex on the biomedical campus of Mission Bay.[5][7] In 2018 the Foundation announced a $500M commitment to begin planning a new UCSF hospital; gifts to the university total more than $1.15 Billion.

Since 1999, the Dillers have donated over 1B via their family foundation named after his wife, The Helen Diller Family Foundation. Other major gifts have funded Jewish studies programs at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, the renovation of the Julius Kahn playground at the Presidio, Mission Dolores Park Playground, now named Helen Diller Playground, and the preschool in the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, named Helen Diller Preschool.[5][8][9] [10] They also support San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Museum of Modern Art and Legion of Honor Museum.

The Foundation operates two Jewish teen programs; an international Jewish teen leadership program, the Diller Teen Fellows and the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards. Since 2007, the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards have recognized Californian Jewish teens who are outstanding role models in their communities.[4]

In 1951, Diller married Helen Samuels (born 1928), the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland, and fellow University of California, Berkeley graduate who he met in college.[5] Her father was a clothing salesman and shop owner.[5] They have three children: Brad Diller, Ron Diller, and Jackie Safier,[4] president of Prometheus.[3] The Dillers live in Woodside, California.[5]

Diller is believed to be behind the website Canary Mission which says it lists those it considers be anti-Israel or antisemitic[11][12] and has said that it will send the names of listed students to prospective employers.[13][14]