Lehigh Valley engineer, developer, and businessman Gopal “Kris” Kapoor and his wife Preeta have committed to making an annual donation to the Temple and St. Luke’s School of Medicine to provide scholarships to several students.
Multiple donors have helped St. Luke’s establish an endowment of nearly $25 million dollars devoted to student scholarships, according to a press release.
Kris Kapoor said that he and his wife are “strong believers in the power of education to transform lives.”
Donors like the Kapoors are making a profound impact on the future of Lehigh Valley healthcare, stated St. Luke’s President and CEO Rick Anderson, since a third of the graduates from the medical school have continued their training or are now employed as physicians at one of the network’s hospitals.
Forty students join the Temple and St. Luke’s School of Medicine each year. More than half of these students are Pennsylvania residents. The school seeks to educate, train, and enhance the careers of the most talented medical students in hopes of lessening the impacts of the ongoing national physician shortage. By bringing so many promising students to the Lehigh Valley and providing them with expert teaching, St. Luke’s is working to ensure that the region will always have high-quality healthcare.
Kris Kapoor was born and educated in India at the Delhi College of Engineering before moving to Germany, then to Catasaqua. He furthered his engineering knowledge in post-graduate classes at Lehigh University while moving up in the ranks of the Fuller Company. He spent time in real estate development, building nearly 300 homes in Macungie, helped found the Hindu Temple Society of Allentown, and served on the board of the Allentown Rescue Mission, ArtsQuest, and the ArtsQuest Foundation.
The Kapoors have seen several physicians at St. Luke’s and have been pleased with the quality of care they received. They decided donating to the network would be an excellent way to help the community.
As Preeta explained, they are happy in their lives and are doing well – now it’s time to give back.
