Laura Fox, ’87, has a generational connection to the Law School. In honor of that connection—and as a result of it—she is affecting the world in ways that will benefit generations to come.

Fox’s father, Jacob L. Fox, graduated from the Law School in 1947, after graduating from the College of the University of Chicago in 1942 and then serving in the military during World War II. Her grandfather also was an alumnus of the Law School.

When Fox and her husband, Ben Van de Bunt, formed a philanthropic foundation in 2022, they called it the Fox Foundation in honor of her father. “He was an old-school lawyer, a true general practitioner whose advice and expertise guided many clients who had family-owned businesses,” Fox said. “He cared deeply about Chicago and was engaged in all aspects of its civic life. He was particularly proud of his ability to help his successful clients give back by forming foundations or creating strategies for charitable giving.”

Fox said that her father was also a strong mentor to Van de Bunt, who credits him with giving career-making and life-changing advice that launched his career as an entrepreneur.

Her father’s influence as an advisor was invaluable when, two years out of law school, Fox had a choice to make. She could take a job with a prominent philanthropy-related nonprofit, or she could join the legal staff of a major Hollywood movie studio. “To my surprise, my father advised me that the philanthropic world was a little staid for a younger person, and I should pursue the faster-paced job in the business of entertainment,” Fox said.

She joined Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, eventually becoming vice president of legal affairs. When her boss at Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, partnered with Stephen Spielberg and David Geffen to create the new venture DreamWorks, Fox was invited to join as head of business and legal affairs in the live-action motion pictures division, where she would serve for eight years.

“My favorite course at the Law School was on negotiation, which in hindsight is not surprising given that I ended up in a job in which dealmaking was a very large component,” she said.

Since leaving DreamWorks, Fox has served on and led the boards of many social impact organizations and institutions in Los Angeles. As president and CEO of the Fox Foundation, she now oversees grantmaking focused on educational equity, economic opportunity, health and wellness support, and social justice advocacy. Last year, the foundation began a three-year change accelerator program that prepares selected leaders to guide next-generation social innovation.

“My father was probably right about philanthropies typically being risk-averse when he advised me in 1989,” Fox said, “but we believe that today many of the best ones creating sustainable solutions require an entrepreneurial approach. We try to operate in that space.”

Since 2017, Fox has taught a course in social entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, in which teams of students analyze a long list of social enterprises, whittle the list down to a smaller number of organizations, and then select six organizations to receive up to $30,000 each to grow earned revenue streams.

Fox serves on the Law School Council, and she is very pleased by what she has seen. “There were legends of legal scholarship on the Law School faculty in my day, and they were also great teachers. I am really excited to see that the Law School has maintained that level of academic excellence while also offering opportunities for practical application of learning and acquisition of business skills. My nephew continued the family tradition when he graduated from the Law School eight years ago, and he has gone on to launch an incredibly successful venture that addresses the vast unmet need for housing for adults with developmental disabilities. Hopefully, the tradition will continue, and future generations of my family will have their own UChicago Law School stories to tell.”