The matriarch of the billionaire Gandel family has called on the rich and powerful to step-up their philanthropy after receiving Australia Day’s top honour.
Pauline Gandel is married to John Gandel who owns half of the biggest mall in the southern hemisphere – Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre – and was ranked seventh on The Australian Financial Review Rich List with wealth of $6.45 billion, ahead of higher-profile billionaires Andrew Forrest and James Packer.
Mr Gandel, who made his fortune investing in shopping centres after selling his Polish-immigrant parents’ stake in the Sussan women’s clothing chain in the 1980s, was awarded the Queen’s Birthday top award in 2017.
“I hope to inspire others to be generous and improve our society,” she said.
Mrs Gandel dedicated the award to “all those trying to help those in need” and said it was recognition for all the causes and organisations I have been supporting from arts and culture to medical research, indigenous programs to building social cohesion, inclusion, funding and supporting for both the Jewish and general community.
Her work began decades ago when she single-handedly ran an op shop at the Chadstone Shopping Centre for over a decade generating some $1.6 million dollars in sales for the Jewish Museum of Australia and Vision Australia.
She and her husband established Gandel Philanthropy over 40 years ago which has distributed over $100 million to charitable causes since its formation.
Her interest in early childhood development forged some ground-breaking projects, most notably the much-loved and multi-sensory Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery at Melbourne Museum.
The couple decided to fund the DNA Sequencing machine at the Monash Health Precinct in 2006, helping to seed the growth of genomics.
In 2008, she supported the Royal Women’s Hospital to purchase a state-of-the-art MRI machine to help revolutionise the care provided to women and newborn babies.
Mrs Gandel’s love of all things Japanese is also well-known, especially tea drinking, lacquer and porcelain and was instrumental setting-up the Pauline Gandel Gallery of Japanese Art at the NGV in 2012, regarded today as the most important collection of Japanese art in Australia.
