The Nazarian family, who lives on Los Angeles’s Westside, is well known for their philanthropic contributions to performance institutions across Southern California, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Skirball Cultural Center. Patriarch Younes is head of Nazarian Enterprises, which invests in alternative energy, logistics technology, aerospace and real estate.
Just about everyone was shocked when the Y & S Nazarian Family Foundation announced they were donating $17 million to the Valley Performing Arts Center on the campus of Cal State University Northridge this past summer. It is the largest single arts gift to the state university system, and it signifies a major transformation, which includes renaming the center to “The Soraya,” after the family matriarch.
Ventura Blvd. editor in chief Linda Grasso sat down with the foundation’s executive director, Sharon Nazarian, to talk about what the donation means to the seven-year-old institution’s future.
What is the mission of the Nazarian Foundation?
SN: Our mission is to support educational causes as well as arts and culture in both the US and Israel. Also, to support public policy in Israel which we do primarily through the Rand Corporation and a few other think tanks. This gift to Northridge hits two of those buckets at the same time—it’s a performing arts venue and an educational institution.
The donation was inspired, in part, by your father’s experience emigrating here from Iran.
SN: My father’s story actually has two immigration experiences. At 16 or 17 he emigrated from Iran to Israel, when Israel was established. Our deep-seated love and connection to Israel comes from that experience. Then in 1978, with the revolution underway, we left again and came to LA via Israel. Both those experiences were transformational for my father in terms of his identity. We had to leave our home and his factory. Everything was taken over by the government. Immigrants have that understanding of the fragility of life. You can lose everything overnight, and then you have to start over. My father has robust thinking about starting over. It does not faze him. He understands he has the ability to do it.
What specifically prompted the VPAC donation?
SN: With the family foundation, we try to be thoughtful in our giving. Northridge spoke to us in so many ways, starting with the performing arts center—this jewel in the middle of the Valley. My brother David also graduated from CSUN and his [philanthropic] efforts have been fundamental to the development of the university’s business and economics school. But it was a lot about the makeup of the student body. The Cal state system is the middle-class engine of the state. It is what makes California work every day. It is what makes California great. Without this facility, the Valley does not have a performing arts center and the Valley, with its ethnically diverse communities, deserves the best of the best. The message we are sending is: we see you; we acknowledge you; you are the fabric of the state and you are our future.
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