In the News

Brickline Greenway is kicking off 2025 with three huge wins! Great Rivers Greenway (GRG), the public agency connecting the region with greenways who turns 25 this year, has received a major boost to support the project’s vision to connect 14 neighborhoods with 12+ miles of greenways. Significant investments from both BJC Health System (BJC) and Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) push the $245 million public-private partnership past the halfway-funded mark, as well as provide critical match for future federal funding applications. Greater St. Louis, Inc. (GSL) stepped up its commitment by forming a working group of CEOs to support capital campaign efforts, further ensuring success for the project in 2025.

At Washington University’s Olin School, Izzy Gorton and Chiara Munzi are disrupting the quick breakfast market – and have raised $234,000 to take their startup national. Gorton and Munzi leveraged the school’s Skandalaris Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to guide the launch of their venture, ChiChi. Even more, adds Gorton, they took advantage of their startup-friendly local ecosystem in St. Louis.

Precious Barry, a WashU undergrad, has partnered with the St. Louis County chapter of the NAACP to help charter a student chapter at the university that will launch this January. The chapter is housed under WashU’s African and African American Studies Department. Its goals are to register to vote as many students as possible, create civically minded leaders and work to promote diversity, equity and inclusion on campus.

One evening in November, a class of about 30 WashU graduate students trickled onto the Cortex campus to learn more about BioGenerator Ventures, the investment arm of the bio-sciences ecosystem nonprofit BioSTL. They were met there by James McCarter, the new head of BioGenerator. McCarter, a major player in St. Louis’ bioscience industry, assumed his role in October. He sees untapped potential for investment particularly at WashU Medicine, which both this year and last garnered the second-highest amount of research funding among all U.S. medical schools from the National Institutes of Health.

The chairman of St. Louis-based Enterprise Holdings and his wife have donated $50 million to Washington University’s neuroscience department. Andrew and Barbara Taylor gave the gift in appreciation for care he received from Wash U neurologists during a recent Illness, according to an announcement from the university.

Duke University and Washington University in St. Louis have each reported receiving $50 million gifts this week in support of advanced medical care. Washington University announced on December 12 that Andrew Taylor and his wife, Barbara, had made a $50 million gift to the university’s neurosurgery department. In recognition of the gift, the department has been renamed the Taylor Family Department of Neurosurgery. The gift was made out of gratitude for the medical care Andrew Taylor recently received from neurosurgeons at Washington University. Mr. Taylor is the executive chairman of Enterprise Mobility, the global car rental and transportation company based in St.Louis.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis received $683 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health this year, making it the second-largest recipient of the federal health funds in the nation for the second straight year. The funding comes in the same year the university opened its $616 million Jeffrey T. Fort Neuroscience Research Building, a recently completed $165 million six-floor expansion of the Steven & Susan Lipstein BJC Institute of Health at Barnes Jewish Hospital, and its new $280 million Siteman Cancer Center building on Forest Park Ave.

Enterprise Mobility Executive Chairman Andy Taylor and his wife, Barbara Taylor, have donated $50 million to Washington University School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department, the university announced Thursday. The department rebranded late last month as the Taylor Family Department of Neurosurgery. The donation from the Taylors is aimed at recruiting and retaining top physicians and researchers to drive innovation in brain tumor studies, spinal surgery and neurotechnology. Washington University said the Taylor’s donation was inspired by Andy Taylor’s own treatment and recovery experience at the Washington University School of Medicine.

Enterprise Mobility Chairman Andrew Taylor and his wife, Barbara Taylor, have gifted $50 million to Washington University’s neurosurgery department, which is being renamed the Taylor Family Department of Neurosurgery. The donation will assist the department with recruiting and retaining physicians and researchers to help drive innovation in brain tumor research, spinal surgery and neurotechnology, according to a university spokesperson.

Staff from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture spent weeks in St. Louis this fall to help Black people find their ancestors using online genealogy tools and preserve family history with digital techniques. Joyce Huston, a blues recording artist who goes by the name Lady J, brought her family memories to Wash U and to the Missouri History Museum so her family stories could help inspire other Black St. Louisans to consider their family archives as treasures that should be viewed by many instead of boxed away in storage.