Jonathan T. Silverstein

Jonathan T. Silverstein, 1989

B.A., Denison University


General Partner and Co-Head
Global Venture Capital
New York


Citation awarded May, 2014

Jonathan Silverstein spent more than 20 years as a Managing Partner and Co-Head of Global Private Equity at OrbiMed, the world’s largest healthcare fund manager. Forbes® Magazine named Jonathan one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world as a member of their “Midas List” seven times over the course of his career.

He is the founder of The Silverstein Foundation for Parkinson’s with GBA, a non-profit organization that actively supports cutting edge research with the goal of discovering new therapies for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease in glucocerebrosidase (GBA) mutation carriers. Since inception, the organization has made more than 40 grants to academic institutions and private biotech companies. Most recently, the Foundation created a two-year, post-doctoral fellowship program that will fund scientists engaged in research on GBA-PD in thirteen different academic and hospital-based laboratories around the world.

A 1989 graduate, Jonathan took a student intern from Denison for 15 consecutive years, mentoring them and assisting with successful job placement on Wall Street. A proud member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, he coordinated an effort to honor his fraternity brother Richard Madden (Class of ’88) who was killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and endowed a scholarship in memory of fraternity brother Greg Waitley (Class of ’89). Jonathan’s philanthropy enabled Denison to build the 170 bedroom Silverstein Hall, the anchor of a residential quad for senior students on the Hill.

Jonathan earned a J.D. and an M.B.A. from the University of San Diego. He and his wife Natalie live in New York City with their three children: Emilia, Arch, and Alaina.