Best Leaders 2025

For decades, whether it relates to his financial endeavors or his philanthropy, Michael Milken has been a visionary ahead of his time.

During his career as a financier, Milken, 79, financed more than 3,000 companies, with a special focus on giving entrepreneurs and other job creators access to the capital they needed to grow their companies.

When entrepreneur Ted Turner decided to start a 24-hour news channel called Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980, many people didn’t see the need for round-the-clock news. Turner came to Milken to finance the deal. Not only did CNN become a global powerhouse, but its success changed the entire news industry.

In 1989, it was Milken who directed the financing for McCaw Cellular so that the regional network of radio and television stations could become a nationwide cellphone carrier. He understood that “it was going to change the world, and the idea that your communication device is where you are, rather than you going to that communication device,” Milken said in an interview with U.S. News & World Report.

Reflecting on his support of such game changers, Milken says that what really characterizes someone as a great innovator is their adaptability.

Many people have good ideas, but they are unable to deviate from Plan A. Milken says those aren’t the people he funded, because most of the time, Plan A doesn’t end up working. The true innovators find new ways to get the desired result, Milken says.

That applies to Milken’s philanthropy too, where he has spent decades finding new ways to make a difference.

Milken had volunteered and done service work as a child, but in 1982, he established the Milken Family Foundation and endowed it with hundreds of millions of dollars. The foundation has collaborated with more than 1,000 organizations in support of children’s well-being and health care. The foundation also awards scholarships to students and sponsors the Milken Educator Awards, often referred to as the “Oscars of Teaching.”

Milken also has a long history of supporting both the practice of medicine and medical research. Milken was the primary benefactor behind the Venice Family Clinic, in Venice, California, and the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In 1993, Milken began the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Now the world’s largest philanthropic funder of prostate cancer research, the foundation has given grants to more than 2,200 programs, and many of its researchers have made transformational breakthroughs – including Dr. James Allison, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

When Milken recognized that patient care suffered because researchers thought of themselves as competitors for grants and resources, his foundation created a consortium of 13 leading cancer centers and awarded 250 grants to collaborating teams.

He has also organized advocacy efforts such as the first Cancer Summit in 1995 and a March on Washington in 1998, which resulted in a $200 billion increase in federal funding for prostate cancer research. Through “Faster Cures,” an initiative started in 2003, Milken’s team has worked to reduce the bureaucracy that slows patients’ access to cutting-edge treatments.

Since 1993, the Food and Drug Administration has approved 14 new prostate cancer therapies – all of which had some tie to Milken’s foundation’s research – and millions of men are now proactively screened for prostate cancer; the death rate from the disease has been cut in half.

These successes have special meaning for Milken, who himself battled prostate cancer. Milken says that deciding on his course of treatment was the most difficult decision he’s ever had to make. He opted for a radiation treatment with lifelong side effects, but since he’s been cancer-free for 32 years, he says he must have made the right choice.

For years, supporters of Milken advocated for a presidential pardon for Milken’s plea of guilty relating to controversial charges that he’d violated securities reporting requirements. In 2020, Milken received a full pardon, and was specifically commended for his long commitment to philanthropy.

In 1993, Milken also created the Milken Institute, a think tank dedicated to examining global issues, while its annual Global Conference and other events bring together more than 72,000 participants every year to discuss social and economic challenges.

“I think so many people are seeing the world as they see it, rather than how others see it,” he says. That, to him, is a failure of leadership.