$10 million gift to university psychiatry honors Herbert Pardes and extends the Lieber family’s pioneering legacy in mental health philanthropy
Columbia University’s latest $10 million psychiatry gift is the culmination of a decades‑long mental health crusade by Stephen and Constance (Connie) Lieber and their family’s Essel Foundation, which has quietly become one of the most influential private funders of brain and behavior research in the United States.
The Essel Foundation is the Lieber family’s private foundation, created in the mid‑1960s and today led by investor Stephen (Steve) Lieber and the couple’s son, Samuel. The foundation maintains a deliberately low public profile, with no standalone website, but its tax filings and grantee lists reveal a sustained, highly focused commitment to mental health and brain science rather than broad, scattershot giving.
For decades, Steve and Connie Lieber have been central leaders in psychiatric philanthropy: Steve chairs the board of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF), while Connie, who died in 2016, served as longtime president of the Essel Foundation and a driving force behind its strategy. Their giving has helped underwrite the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at Johns Hopkins, major schizophrenia and psychotic disorder programs at Columbia; and community and education causes, including scholarships at Connie’s alma mater, Brooklyn College.
The Pardes Scholars gift builds on a personal and professional relationship the Liebers have had with Herbert Pardes and Columbia psychiatry dating back to the early 1980s. After attending an early Columbia schizophrenia conference, the Liebers met Pardes—then a rising national leader in mental health policy—who was helping launch what became the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. Over time, the family helped create Columbia’s Lieber Recovery and Rehabilitation Clinic for Psychotic Disorders and the Lieber Schizophrenia Clinic, cementing Columbia as a key hub of their philanthropy.
Honoring Pardes with this latest initiative reflects both friendship and alignment of mission: Pardes served as director of the National Institute of Mental Health, then chaired Columbia’s psychiatry department, and later became vice president for health sciences and dean of the medical faculty, while also emerging as a major public advocate against stigma in mental illness. The new program places his name on a vehicle designed to advance what he championed institutionally—protecting and empowering the next generation of psychiatric leaders.
Authorized by the Essel Foundation, the $10 million gift will fully fund the Dr. Herbert Pardes Scholars Initiative for its first five years in Columbia’s Department of Psychiatry at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. The program will provide flexible supplementary support to roughly 25 to 30 assistant professors, giving them resources to launch high‑risk, high‑reward projects, seed pilot studies, and build the track records needed for competitive federal grants and promotion.
Columbia has pledged to raise an additional $30 million over the same period to permanently endow the program, effectively turning the Liebers’ initial investment into a sustained platform for junior faculty development in research, education, and clinical care. Department chair Joshua Gordon has framed the initiative as a buffer against a “very sensitive and challenging” early‑career period when young investigators are often expected to fund their own salaries and labs, a set of conditions he notes have become harsher amid recent federal scrutiny and temporary cuts to Columbia’s NIH portfolio.
The Pardes Scholars Initiative is consistent with the Liebers’ longstanding efforts to shift the mental health field: by placing early‑career scientists at the center of their strategy. Through the Essel Foundation and BBRF, they helped design prizes, fellowships, and seed grants that have launched thousands of research careers and supported more than 5,900 grants to over 4,800 scientists worldwide, with some prizewinners later receiving Nobel Prizes.
In psychiatry, where federal support can be volatile and stigma still weighs on both patients and investigators, this kind of donor‑driven early‑career funding can be decisive in determining which ideas survive long enough to change practice. By anchoring their latest gift at Columbia—and tying it explicitly to Pardes’ legacy—the Liebers and the Essel Foundation are signaling that, even amid political and funding turbulence, they intend to keep backing the people and institutions they see as most likely to move the science of mental illness forward.