Meet Our Donors

We thank all our planned-gift donors for their generous support. Here are some of their stories.

Janet and Marty Spatz

Janet and Marty Spatz have a long-term affection for the Bronx and a deep connection to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where they have been generous donors to cancer research for 20 years.

So, it was profoundly important to them, as directors of The Helen and Irving Spatz Foundation, to set up a legacy gift from the foundation to Einstein in their estate plans to fund further cancer research. Marty, whose father, Irving, established the foundation, grew up in the Bronx, and Janet lived there in her younger years. And, of course, Einstein's innovative research on cancer, a disease that has affected both, drew them to donate.

"One, it's in the Bronx, the place that we started [our lives] and, two, it has cutting-edge scientists," Janet said. "I think the research they're doing is just wonderful."

Janet knows firsthand the importance of cancer research. She is currently battling a second, different, breast cancer, 25 years after her first.

Other close family members have also suffered from the disease, including Janet's mother and brother and Marty's mother and sister.

"It goes on and on with cancer in our families," she said.

That is why they wanted to give something for cancer research. Finding Einstein was partly serendipity.

"I Googled, to be honest, —cancer research' and various things popped up and one was Einstein. And I said, —oh boy, I know Einstein in the Bronx. They have an extremely high reputation, with brilliant scientists.'"

Finding each other was also partly serendipity. Marty's father owned apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx, which Marty managed. Janet had a career working for a large investment firm as an account assistant helping high net worth clients.

"I was in my late forties, and he was 52. I was never married; he was never married, and we met at Hudson Park" in New Rochelle, she said. "It was like, I guess, love at first sight."

Marty proposed two weeks later, but Janet held out. "I was single all those years and I didn't want to rock the boat. So, we decided to wait, and we got married about a year and a half after we met."

After Marty's father died, they started pledging money from the foundation to Einstein for cancer research. In 2006, they gave money for a new cancer lab. In 2011, they made a pledge to the Center for Experimental Therapeutics, aimed at finding innovative treatments. In 2015, they pledged money toward pancreatic cancer research. The next year, they gave to the Center for Immunotherapeutics, which seeks to use the body's own defenses to get rid of cancer and other diseases. Last year, they gave to the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center to support research by John Condeelis, Ph.D., and his team whose work focuses on predicting the risk of metastasis in breast cancer.

Through their bequest plans, the foundation will establish the Spatz Cancer Research Endowed Fund that will allow their commitment for investigating cancer to continue.

Janet said that Dr. Allen Spiegel, dean at Einstein from 2006-2018, played a key role in their decision to continue to give. "He was so enthusiastic about Einstein and the research they do," she said.

Prior to COVID, Janet and Marty returned to the Bronx for an annual tour of Einstein's research facilities. Janet said that while she and Marty have not been able to visit campus recently, their nephew, Scott Alintoff, also a director in the foundation, was able to take his first tour in December 2022.

"My nephew was really wowed by it all," she said.

Although Janet is being treated for breast cancer in Florida, where she and Marty moved 21 years ago, she said Dr. Condeelis and his team have been stalwart supporters. She is especially grateful to pathologist Maja Okaty, M.D., Ph.D., co-leader of the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program, and Jessica Pastoriza, M.D., Assistant Professor of Surgery at Einstein, both of whom she has developed a family-like closeness.

"They've been helping me so much," she said.

By making a planned gift that will benefit the College of Medicine, Janet and Marty Spatz are now also inaugural members of the Albert Einstein Legacy Society, which celebrates individuals — alumni, faculty, staff, and friends — who wish to advance the College of Medicine's mission through a legacy gift in their estate plans.

Leaving a legacy gift from the foundation to Einstein for cancer research was not a hard decision, Janet said.

"It makes me feel wonderful doing it. It really does. Sometimes I feel too wonderful about it – you know what I mean? But it gives me a lot of pleasure to know that we have given."

Legacy gifts honor Einstein's history of medical education and research and help ensure its future prosperity. These planned gifts – which can be established in a variety of ways, such as a gift in your will, IRA charitable rollover, life insurance beneficiary designation, charitable remainder trusts, or a securities transfer – also offer potential financial and tax benefits to you and your family. If Einstein is already a part of your plans, please let us know so you, too, can be welcomed into the Albert Einstein Legacy Society.

If you would like to speak to someone about creating a plan that best serves your philanthropic goals, contact Michael Divers, Planned Giving Officer, at einstein-MDivers@einsteinmed.org or 718-430-2685.