Michael Bloomberg (b. 1942)
Filed under the name Michael · September 7, 2026
Michael Bloomberg built a business empire and a mayoralty and then turned around and gave away billions of dollars through Bloomberg Philanthropies to public health, education, and environmental causes, including a serious, sustained push to reduce tobacco use worldwide. I've driven through towns that got hit hard by cigarette advertising decades back, and towns that later benefited from public health campaigns pushing back against it, so that particular piece of his giving lands close to home for me even with no personal connection to the man himself. I try to hold two things at once when I write about wealthy philanthropists — that a fortune that size raises fair questions about how it got built, and that what a person actually does with it, once they have it, still matters and is worth crediting honestly. Bloomberg chose to put real money behind measurable public health outcomes rather than just a building with his name on it. That is worth saying plainly, without irony.