$160 million donor to public health school Celia Scott Weatherhead earns naming rights

A longtime donor who has given more than $160 million to Tulane University to date-including a new, very significant gift is the new namesake of the university’s expanding 112-year-old school of public health, Tulane officials announced.

School officials indicated it will help transform the institution into one the best in the world.

Weatherhead is a 1965 graduate of Tulane’s Newcomb College.

The university said the gifts she and her late husband Albert made constitute the largest amount in the school’s history.

The school also said a new gift from Weatherhead will help expand the school’s downtown New Orleans campus and increase research funding, with the goal of establishing it as the premier school of its kind in the United States and one of the top in the world.

The Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was established in 1912. Its research, undergraduate and graduate fields include biostatistics, maternal and child health, epidemiology, nutrition, health policy, clinical research, environmental health sciences and violence prevention.

”Her gift is a true game changer,” said Thomas LaVeist, dean of what is now Tulane’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. ”It will further propel research into the most devastating diseases and the most concerning and complex issues of our times. It will provide generations of students with the skills and knowledge they need to help heal our world.”

Celia S. Weatherhead earned her undergraduate degree in theatre from Newcomb College in 1965, followed by a Master of Education degree from Florida Atlantic University.

Ms. Weatherhead devotes herself to the community as President of the Weatherhead Foundation and the Albert J. Weatherhead, III Foundation. Ms. Weatherhead and her late husband, Al, have given generously to Tulane, endowing the Celia Scott Weatherhead Distinguished Chair in Philosophy, the Margaret W. and Eamon M. Kelly Distinguished Chair in International Development, and the Weatherhead Presidential Chair in Health Equity, currently held by Dean Thomas LaVeist.

In 1994, the Weatherheads were inducted into the Paul Tulane Society, the university’s highest distinction.

Ms. Weatherhead’s current involvements are the breeding and training of Italian greyhounds for show dogs and pets.

She has a small canine couture design and marketing business known as Kozy Kashmir, Inc. Ms. Weatherhead is a past member of Newcomb Dean’s Advisory Council and Tulane President’s Council and is currently an emeritus member of the Board of Tulane.

She joined the Dean’s Advisory Council in 2019.