$10 billion and a life built on heart: philanthropist Susan Dell is leading one of the world’s most extraordinary giving stories: “We believe giving is the most important thing we will do in our lives.”

Long before her name was carved into hospitals and research campuses, Susan Dell was a girl in Dallas who could not stay quiet when she saw someone light a cigarette.

In the grocery store, she would walk right up to strangers and tell them, earnestly, not to smoke.

She was the daughter of Zelig “Zeck” Lieberman, a respected surgical oncologist at Baylor University Medical Center.

She grew up in a close-knit Jewish family, and her father’s devotion to patients gave her a lifelong passion for health.

That small, brave instinct to step forward for another person’s well-being became the first glimpse of the woman who now guides one of the world’s most consequential philanthropies.

Today Susan is co-founder and chair of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which she and her husband, Michael, started in 1999.

Together they have committed more than $10 billion to nonprofits and social enterprises in the United States, India, Africa, and Israel.

The foundation runs more than 800 active projects every year, organized around three things she has cared about since childhood: education, health, and the dignity of a family being able to support itself.

For more than 25 years she has set its strategic priorities and steered its growth. People who have worked beside her describe a leader whose warmth and rigor are hard to tell apart.

“People matter to her,” says Janet Mountain, who leads the foundation. “And because people matter to her, solutions matter to her.” Gregg Lemkau, co-CEO of BDT & MSD Partners, puts it more simply:

“Every detail of everything Susan does is done with absolute excellence.” Her brother, Steve Lieberman, uses a phrase any Texan would recognize: “Susan has always been that big-hearted person that’s just Texas-sized.”

That big heart has always come with remarkable grit.

Susan swam and ran from a young age and won camp titles for long-distance swims alongside her brother.

She went on to race for more than three decades in marathons, cycling events, and triathlons.

For her 40th birthday, she gave herself a present few people would dare to want: finishing the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, with Michael and their children cheering her toward the line.

“For Susan,” says her lifelong friend Jennifer Greenblum, “an obstacle is an invitation to overcome.”

Her commitment to fitness eventually reached the national stage.

She served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and on the board of the Cooper Institute in Dallas.

Her love story with Michael began with a test he didn’t know he was taking. Susan had studied fashion merchandising and design at Arizona State University, then moved to Austin to work in real estate.

In February 1988, the two were set up on a blind date. She suggested an “easy” bike ride.

Michael soon learned that her idea of easy was very different from his, and he got his first look at her strength and determination.

She was taken with him from the start.

“Most men I dated talked about themselves a lot and tried to impress me,” she once recalled.

“He was the nicest guy I’d ever met.” They married in October 1989 in a ceremony that honored their Jewish traditions, and they went on to raise four children in Austin.

Susan also built a creative career entirely her own.

She launched three fashion labels.

Her Austin boutique was designed by the celebrated architect Charles Gwathmey. When Laura Bush saw the ball gowns Susan had created for Austin women, she asked her to design inaugural gowns for her daughters, Barbara and Jenna.

Susan later founded the luxury label Phi, which showed its first ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week.

Friends say she brings the same precision to everything: to a hemline, a training plan, and a grant strategy alike.

Her philanthropy has transformed Central Texas most of all.

The Dells helped bring Dell Children’s Medical Center to life, and Susan remains a life trustee of the Dell Children’s Foundation.

They supported the Dell Pediatric Research Institute and Dell Seton Medical Center.

They also committed $50 million to found Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, plus another $10 million for local health initiatives.

“A medical school at UT Austin further establishes Central Texas as a center of excellence for family health and research,” Susan said then. It was a sentence her father might have been proud to hear.

This spring that vision grew to a scale few universities have ever seen.

With a new $750 million commitment, Michael and Susan Dell became the first donors in UT Austin’s history to pass $1 billion in lifetime giving.

It is one of the largest philanthropic commitments ever made to a U.S. university.

The university is naming two new institutions for them.

The UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research will cover more than 300 acres in North Austin.

At its heart will be the UT Dell Medical Center, planned as the nation’s first “AI-native” academic medical center, designed from the ground up for earlier diagnoses, more precise treatment, and care built around each patient.

It is scheduled to open in 2030 with a hospital tower, outpatient facilities, and a full emergency department, with specialty programs added through 2032.

MD Anderson Cancer Center will be part of the medical center itself, so families facing cancer can get world-class care close to home.

The gift also supports undergraduate scholarships, student housing, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

It has given the university the confidence to set a goal of raising $10 billion in ten years and joining the nation’s top ten medical centers within a decade.

“What makes this moment so meaningful,” the Dells said, “is the opportunity to build something that brings every part of the journey together—from how students learn to how discoveries are made to how care reaches families.”

UT System Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife was even more direct: “Susan and Michael Dell have changed The University of Texas at Austin, and the world. We are so proud to call them Longhorns.”

Susan’s compassion shows most clearly when Texans are hurting.

After Hurricane Harvey devastated the Gulf Coast, she challenged her foundation team to think big about how to help.

She and Michael quickly committed more than $43 million toward a $100 million Rebuild Texas Fund that supported recovery across 41 counties.

For Susan, the work was deeply personal, because it meant rebuilding the state where she and Michael grew up.

Her leadership earned her a place in the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame. Last year the couple also received the History-Making Texan Award, which honors Texans whose contributions to the state, the nation, and the world are exceptional in scope and impact.

Lately her attention has turned to the youngest Americans and the futures they are just starting to picture.

The Dells pledged $6.25 billion, one of the largest private commitments ever made to American children, to put $250 into the new federal children’s investment accounts of 25 million kids.

The money goes to children 10 and under who are too old for the government’s separate $1,000 deposit and who live in ZIP codes where the median income is $150,000 or less.

The couple first considered keeping the gift within Texas, then decided to open it to the whole country.

“We believe that when children have a future that they can see is worth saving for,” Susan said, “then that will help build hope and opportunity and prosperity for generations to come.”

The money is now reaching children, and families are writing back.

Susan recently returned to the White House to report that the deposits were arriving in millions of accounts, and she spoke with visible emotion about the letters.

“Michael and I have heard from so many parents and kids and grandparents with these beautiful letters that have truly moved us,” she said.

“Children have told us that they want to become entrepreneurs. They want to become nurses, doctors, and engineers. They want to build their own company someday.”

One child wrote in careful handwriting: “Dear Dell Family, Thank you for the money in my Trump bank account. I’m very glad to be saving for my future.”

Then Susan spoke straight to the children: “It’s not just the money that matters. That does matter, but knowing someone believes in you and your future, that matters just as much. To every child across the country, these accounts are for you. We believe in you, and we want you to dream big because we know you can make your dreams come true.”

That belief may be the thread running through her whole life: the girl in the grocery aisle, the athlete in Kona, the designer, the mother of four, and the chair steering billions toward healthier, more hopeful lives.

“We believe giving is the most important thing we will do in our lives,” she has said.

And for all she has already built, Susan Dell still talks about the work as if it were just beginning.

“The reality is, you know, we’re just getting started.”