McMaster receives $32M gift from former Hamilton Spectator paperboy

McMaster University has received a $32 million gift from a successful eye doctor and entrepreneur who once worked in Hamilton as a paperboy.

Marnix Heersink has gifted the large sum to help boost the university’s role as a hub for biomedical innovation, entrepreneurship and global health.

The gift will create the Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship to educate the next generation of entrepreneurial health innovators.

Heersink was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Burlington. After graduating as a physician, he moved to Alabama where he has a successful career as an ophthalmologist and business leader.

The Hamilton Spectator says Heersink once worked as a paper carrier for the local newspaper and says he credits the paper route with teaching the fundamentals of business.

“Health care, innovation and entrepreneurship go hand-in-hand. We’ve seen how McMaster encourages this trend and I was inspired. The possibility of amplifying health-care innovation beyond McMaster is what motivates me to make this donation, which I consider an investment in the creation of more opportunities for others,” said Heersink in a statement.

A portion of the gift will also be used for the Mary Heersink Centre for Global Health, named for his wife, to create new solutions addressing emerging trends and threats to global health, such as pandemics and the climate crisis.

Mary Heersink, a food security author and advocate, is a founding member of the international advisory board for McMaster’s Global Health Graduate Program, which includes a consortium of universities in the Netherlands, India, Thailand, Norway, Colombia and Sudan.

“The problem-based learning model that came out of McMaster University’s pioneering work is now embraced across the world, and it is a proven entity that has already transformed medical education,” she said. “The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored we need a new way of teaching healthcare workers and new approaches to public health in the global arena. The pandemic stretches beyond the physical and medical to the economic, psychosocial and educational disruptions that cut across all societies and boundaries.”

The Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship will be based at the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery on McMaster’s main campus, and in the future, it will be housed in a new purpose-built building, as McMaster develops Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats.