Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on July 15, 2026.
For almost 50 years, Lyda Hill has held firm in her fervent belief that “science is the answer.” The catchphrase greets visitors to her organization’s website. It’s also her personal mantra. One grantee told Inside Philanthropy it can be found on the back of Hill’s business cards, which are orange, apparently the self-styled philanthropreneur’s favorite color.
Hill has long supported science solutions to society’s challenges by aiming to back changemakers closest to the problems. The Dallas dweller’s giving involves a two-pronged approach, funding via Lyda Hill Philanthropies (LHP), and investment through LH Capital. Hill’s eponymous philanthropic vehicle, founded in 2013, has funded nonprofits working on biomedical research, STEM education, public health, community concerns and environmental preservation. The focus is mostly on organizations in Texas and Colorado, where she also has a home, but her largesse reaches to national and global concerns, too.
LHP has supported more than 1,180 grantees through over 5,500 unique gifts, according to the organization. In 2025, LHP made more than 600 gifts to 384 recipients. Its grants tend to be large — in the $10- to $60-million-dollar range — and focused on institutions and innovation. For instance, the annual Hill Prizes, administered by the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology, fund Texas researchers engaged in seven areas seeking to “accelerate high-risk, high-reward research ideas with significant potential for real-world impact,” according to the prize website.
“We are committed to investing in great ideas and people that are solving the biggest issues facing the world today,” Hill told IP. “We focus our resources where we believe we can help unlock solutions that will benefit our communities for years to come.”
Like fellow major donors including Melinda French Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Pierre and Pam Omidyar, Hill has opted for a nontraditional hybrid approach, operating on the premise that complex challenges can’t be solved with a one-size-fits-all approach. To that end, her venture capital arm, LH Capital, manages a significant life sciences portfolio. That capital is deployed across a range of structures, including grants, investments and operating initiatives, her team told IP. Hill views investment capital as a powerful tool for change. The thinking here is that LHP and LH Capital can marry philanthropy and investment capital around a shared mission, which can drive more meaningful, measurable change than either could achieve alone.
While some in the philanthrosphere point to a lack of transparency and accessibility on the part of ultrawealthy private donors in general, and the outsized influence they can wield on public policy and community concerns, the octogenarian has mostly been lauded for her place-based giving.
A long history of largesse
The granddaughter of Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and a member of the billionaire Hunt family, Hill supports her philanthropic work with proceeds from her travel business, real estate and investments. Giving back was engrained in her from an early age; she has gone on to win many honors for her charity, including a Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2022 and a recent nod in Time’s Top 100 Philanthropy List for 2026.
Hill signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, writing, “I made the decision long ago to donate the entirety of my estate to philanthropy and scientific research.” She was guided, in part, by advice from Giving Pledge cofounder Warren Buffett: “Don’t do what others can, and will, do with their giving; do what they can’t, and won’t, do.”
Hill has several key areas of focus, but LHP gives to a diverse array of causes. For instance, Hill is a cofounding donor to the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute in Dallas, contributing more than $35 million to the nonprofit’s work on behavioral health legislation and systems change.
Her philanthropic strategy, as she explained it via email, is a balance of “big bets” and “sure bets.” “Big bets are high-risk, innovative efforts with the potential for transformative impact,” Hill wrote. “Sure bets are about critical expenses to operate effectively and build capacity. Together, this approach ensures both immediate results and long-term breakthroughs.”
Cancer prevention and cure: a passion project
A breast cancer survivor who has lost family members to forms of the disease, Hill has given extensively in this space. LHP has donated more than $100 million to organizations working on eliminating cancer, including over $60 million to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her cancer funding reflects her longstanding conviction that advancing science is one of the highest-leverage ways to improve and save lives at scale. Beyond philanthropy, she has also invested more than $400 million in cancer-related companies, startups and funds, according to her team.
“We have many, many supporters, but I don’t think that we have anyone who’s [been] so committed to our mission over such a long period of time,” UT MD Anderson President Peter Pisters told IP, noting that Hill is closing in on 50 years of support for the institution. “You get a feel for the passion that she has for our commitment to end cancer.”
Pisters said that Hill has the ability to connect the dots around prevention and understands the benefits of a team-based approach to science: collaborative, cross-disciplinary research and coordinated clinical programs. She was an early champion for the cancer center’s Moon Shots Program, donating $50 million to the research effort in 2013. In recognition of Hill’s gift — the largest single private philanthropic contribution to the program at the time — the institution named the Lyda Hill Cancer Prevention Center in her honor.
According to her team, other recipients of funding to prevent, treat and eliminate cancer include the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center ($60 million); two American Cancer Society initiatives, Mission: HPV Cancer Free Texas public health campaign, and venture capital hub BrightEdge Texas Accelerator (more than $11 million); and several research and clinical trials grants to organizations including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, MIT, the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley and the University of Washington Institute for Protein Design.
Women in science matter, too
In addition to funding scientific research, Hill’s a major advocate for gender equity in science. LHP’s IF/THEN initiative, which Hill cofounded in 2019 with LHP and LH Capital CEO Nicole Small, seeks to amplify women’s voices in STEM and inspire girls to pursue science careers. LHP has gifted more than $75 million to a range of narrative change platforms with a female focus, including funding a 3D-printed statue exhibit of women game changers in science fields; a new iteration of that project launched in Dallas during the FIFA World Cup 2026.
“Mission Unstoppable,” an award-winning television series in its seventh season showcasing successful women in STEM, is another LHP beneficiary. Last year, LHP also partnered with the production house Hello Sunshine, founded by Reese Witherspoon, as part of its commitment to supporting innovative approaches to female storytelling. One of the projects from that collaboration, “The Rise,” is a five-part documentary series capturing the growth of women’s professional sports.
Giving for the natural environment
While much of Hill’s giving tends to be local, her environmental funding also has national reach.
For example, she has gifted $50 million to the Pew Charitable Trusts for work on national parks, ocean conservation and antibiotic resistance. LHP has also supported a wide array of scientists at National Geographic ($10 million+), including its first women explorers fund.
Hill was one of the first founding donors to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, gifting more than $50 million to the institution since its inception in 2012. “It’s part of her ethos that she likes to be early in, especially on projects that are a little bit different and a little bit risky,” Perot Museum CEO Linda Silver told IP. “She wants to be at that front edge, and she hopes that people will then come in behind her.” That’s not all: “Hill recognizes that investing in the science museum is really a long-term bet on the workforce development pipeline.”
The Lyda Hill Gems and Minerals Hall is one of 11 permanent galleries at the museum. Hill played a major role not just in the funding and the idea behind the hall, but in the way the museum approached it, Silver said. An avid mineral collector, Hill loaned much of her collection to the museum and asked other local collectors to lend to the museum, as well — Dallas has one of the largest gem- and mineral-collecting communities in the world, according to Silver. “We get to exhibit specimens that we could never afford on our own collections’ budget,” Silver said.
Investing in infrastructure — and the long haul
This year marks the five-year anniversary of Pegasus Park, a major life sciences, biotech and social impact nonprofit hub in Dallas in which Hill invested starting in 2021, in a partnership with J. Small Investments and the real estate investment firm Montgomery Street Partners. The 26-acre campus is now home to more than 33 life sciences companies, 35 social impact organizations, seven higher education institutions and six entrepreneurial support organizations, according to LHP. Notably, it also plays host to 20 funding organizations.
Nonprofits in the mix include the Dallas Foundation, membership association Philanthropy Southwest, the Grant Halliburton Foundation (which focuses on youth mental health education) and the Carson Leslie Foundation (which supports pediatric cancer). One LHP grantee that works out of Pegasus Park is the Texas office of the Trust for Public Land. “Every day, I am reminded that she is investing in her own city, not from a distance but from the ground up,” said Molly Morgan, Texas state director for the Trust for Public Land. “She lives by a simple line: ‘Do your givin’ while you’re livin’.”
Another LHP grantee had this to say about Hill’s reach in the region. “She doesn’t just write checks, she shapes ecosystems,” said Julie Diaz, president and CEO of the Dallas Foundation, managing partner for the social impact hub known as The Water Cooler at Pegasus Park. “Most funders want to see direct program outcomes, which is understandable. Lyda invests upstream of that, in the infrastructure that makes philanthropy more effective.”
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