30 Aspiring Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Eli Broad

Eli Broad, the co-founder of home builder Kaufman & Broad, is known to give away millions and millions in the form of scholarships to high school seniors in the urban areas. He has been constantly ranked as one of the most influential persons as well as one among the top 100 wealthiest person in the world. Here are some very interesting facts about him:

1.  Broad is the first person, as well as the only person till date, to have created two Fortune 500 companies - KB Home and Sun America in different industries.
2.  He was named as the Chevalier in the National Order of the Legion of Honor by the Republic of France, in the year 1994.
3.  For his philanthropic activities, he was awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership by Philanthropy Roundtable, in October 2013.
4.  He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and also served as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution from the year 2004 till 2009. He also serves on the board of the Future Generation Art Prize.
5.  In the year 2007, he was honored with the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, and two years later in March 2009, he was awarded the David Rockefeller Award from the Museum of Modern Art.
6.  He held the record of being the youngest Michigan resident to attain the credentials of Certified Public Accountant (CPA), until the year 2010.
7.  His company KB Home was the first homebuilder listed on the New York Stock Exchange, in the year 1969.
8.  His first book "The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking," debuted in the year 2012, as a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller.
9.  He, along with his wife, signed "The Giving Pledge," personally committing to give away over 75 percent of their wealth to philanthropic causes, in the year 2010.
10.  Since the year 1973, he has been an influential figure in the art world, and was the founding chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in the year 1979.
11.  Eli Board was born on June 6, 1933, as the only son of Leon Broad and Rita Broad, both Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, in Bronx, New York.
12.  His father was a house painter, while his mother was a dressmaker. The family moved to Detroit, Michigan, where his father became the owner of five-and-dime stores, while being a union organizer.
13.  He was only six years old, during the move, and went to Detroit Public Schools, before graduating from Detroit Central High School in the year 1951.
14.  He majored in accounting with a minor in economics, graduating cum laude from the Michigan State University, in the year 1954.
15.  While studying at college, he tried his hand at several jobs including selling women's shoes, as well as selling garbage disposals door-to-door.
16.  He reportedly worked as a drill press operator at Packard Motor, an American Luxury Automobile marque, where he was said to be a member of United Automobile Workers, the American labor union.
17.  He, initially, worked as an accountant while teaching night classes at the Detroit Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of accounting for two years.
18.  Broad first started his own accounting firm, in the office space offered by Donald Bruce Kaufman, his wife's cousin's husband, in return for doing the books for Kaufman's small homebuilding and subcontracting business.
19.  Working on Kaufman's business, made him decide to enter the homebuilding sector, following which he decided to partner with Kaufman and build homes in the year 1956.
20.  He borrowed $12,500 from his wife's parents, as the capital for his first venture with Kaufman, building two model homes in the Northeast Detroit suburbs.
21.  The duo christened the model the "Award Winner" in which they eliminated basements, offering a carport instead, making the monthly mortgage less than the rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
22.  Within two years, the duo built 600 homes in the Detroit suburbs, but decided to move to Phoenix, Arizona in the year 1960, for the fear that the Detroit economy was too dependent on the automotive business.
23.  The company Kaufman and Broad Home Corporation, now known as KB Home, went public for the first time in the year 1961, on the American Stock Exchange.
24.  He moved the company in the year 1963 to Los Angeles, following which Kaufman retired and became a noted philanthropist with his wife Glorya Kaufman.
25.  He acquired Sun Life Insurance in the year 1971 for $52 million, and transformed it into a retirement savings powerhouse SunAmerica.
26.  He sold SunAmerica to the American International Group (AIG) in the year 1999, for a humungous amount of $18 billion, when he started focusing on philanthropy full-time.
27.  He, along with his wife created The Broad Foundations that includes organizations - The Broad Art Foundation and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Both the foundations have a total of $3 billion in assets.
28.  He founded the Grand Avenue Committee, which coordinates and oversees the development of Grand Avenue in Los Angeles.
29.  He and his wife created the Broad Medical Research Program to fund innovative research to advance the treatment of IBD, in the year 2001. The couple's investments in medical research focuses on three areas - human genomics, stem cell research and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
30.  He married Edythe Lawson in the year 1954 and has two sons - Jeffrey, born in the year 1956, and Gary, born in the year 1959.
31.  Eli Board Net Worth: $6.7 Billion