Daisy M. Soros
Early Life
Daisy M. (Schlenger) Soros was born of Hungarian heritage in 1929 in Bratislava, in what is now Slovakia. During the first six years of her life she, an only child, and her parents spent much of their time in the town of Oberwart, Austria, which was her father’s birthplace.
In 1935 Daisy moved with her parents to Budapest. They settled in an elegant building in Pest, the district east of the Danube River. Daisy fondly recalls growing up surrounded by the city’s beauty—taking it in on leisurely strolls along DunaKorzo, a hotel-lined promenade along the river embankment, past the grand public baths, and down the broad avenues of Pest, shaded by chestnut and acacia trees. Conversing in the region’s many languages—German, Slovak, French, and Hungarian—she saw the greatest musicians of Europe in concert, haunted Deanna Durbin and Andy Hardy matinees at the cinema, and came of age sneaking backstage to leave flowers for the theater stars that visited the capital.
After the Nazis invaded Budapest in March 1944, Daisy’s father secured false papers for her, and she lived without her parents for half of a year in a convent, enduring frequent air raids, like most others in the city. By the end of the war, she and about thirty other women and girls had spent a month in the convent’s cellar, using melted snow to wash themselves. After the Russians “liberated” the city in 1945, scarcity in the stores led to a black market—so much so that Daisy would barter pieces of her jewelry with street vendors for items like sugar and flour. Tragically, her mother did not survive the war.
Coming to the United States
When Daisy was 18, in 1947, she graduated from gymnasium, Hungarian secondary schooling intended to prepare students for university. Her father, fearing communist rule, sent her to Switzerland to study hotel management at L’Ecole Hôtelière in Lausanne, and later at Hotelfachschule in Lucerne. In 1950, she traveled to the United States on a student visa and enrolled at Columbia University. While there, Daisy lived in International House, a nonprofit residence founded by the Rockefeller and Dodge families intended to teach foreign and American students to live side by side and become neighbors.
Through friends from International House, she met Paul Soros in February of 1950, and they married a year later in February of 1951. Their first home was a modest but airy ninety-dollar-per-month ground-floor apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. Here, for the first time of many, Daisy would transform their living space into a fun and stylish home, full of vitality, with modern earth-tone color accents, light teak furniture and dishes by then-unknown designer Russel Wright.
In the mid-1950s, Daisy’s student visa expired, and she was put into deportation proceedings. She recalls being told that in the United States, if you have a problem, then you should go see your congressman. So, she approached Lester Holtzman, representative for New York’s 6th Congressional District in Queens, and explained her case. It worked. Holtzman sponsored a private bill on her behalf that allowed Daisy to stay, become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen. This outcome will surprise no one who knows Daisy well.
As Paul’s engineering career advanced, and their financial situation improved, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut in 1957. There, they played golf, tennis, and swam, hosted dinner parties for their neighbors, and raised their children in the changing times of the sixties. In 1956, Paul launched Soros Associates, a global consulting business specializing in ports and shipping. Chatting at dinner parties with luminaries from the New Canaan architectural scene like Marcel Breuer and Philip Johnson, Daisy herself studied at the New York School of Interior Design in the late 1960s, honing her lifelong instinct for beauty and decoration.
Giving Back
Change came to the Soros family after their sons, Peter and Jeffrey, left for college. In 1971, in her early forties, Daisy felt a need to look beyond motherhood for another vocation, and began her professional life in philanthropy as a volunteer for the United Nations. She helped delegates from around the world secure housing, place their children in schools, and acclimate to the life and culture of the United States.
Soon after, Daisy began what would become a lifelong pursuit: identifying and supporting needs in medicine and medical research. Between 1973 and 1975, she completed a degree in psychiatric social work at New York University, writing her thesis on socioeconomic disparities in hospital emergency rooms. She did her field work at the Beth Abraham Center in the Bronx, focusing on palliative care and aiding terminally ill patients as they prepared for the end of their lives.
Her study and experiences in New York hospitals led her to explore the field as widely as possible. After joining the board of Weill Cornell Medical College, Daisy created a program for students to explore end-of-life issues and sponsored a series of discussions that brought together doctors, patients, and members of the public on current issues in medicine and medical ethics.
Reflecting on her lifelong dedication to medicine, Daisy remarked in 2016 that although she never became a physician, she “pursued [her] own version of the Hippocratic Oath” through supporting medical causes, aiming to reduce harm by enabling the researchers of today and tomorrow.
Daisy’s philanthropic life also favors another passion that continues to inspire her: the arts. After she became an ambassador for Soros Associates in 1981, her volunteer career in the New York art world began with overseeing the international patron committee of the Metropolitan Opera Guild in 1986. Daisy soon joined the volunteer executive committee of the New York Philharmonic, and after chairing a highly lauded screening of Sergei Eistenstein’s silent film Alexander Nevsky in 1991, with live musical accompaniment by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Philharmonic playing the Prokofiev score, Daisy was asked to join the board of Lincoln Center.
Beyond art and medicine, what took shape through these decades is a philanthropic career that is exceptional in its breadth, commitment and variety of interests. Daisy served as an advisor, board member, or trustee for International House, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Foreign Policy Association, the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the American Austrian Foundation, and the Venetian Heritage Board, as well as chairing the Board of the Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra.
This success comes from leadership evident since her early days at the Met Guild. Daisy has proven exceptional at filling the philanthropic wings of these organizations with talented people, making the exacting work of event planning fun, and inspiring her colleagues to give their time gladly. In recognition of her philanthropic work, Daisy earned honorary doctorates from Bates College, Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York, and the New York School of Interior Design.
The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans represent the most personal achievement of Daisy’s career, the one closest to her heart. The couple created the Fellowship to invest personally in young leaders and scholars from immigrant backgrounds, with the goal of allowing them to pursue groundbreaking work across all sectors for the benefit of the United States and of the world.
Every fall since the founding of the program in 1998, Daisy and Paul held a reception for the newest Fellows in New York City, and now Daisy continues that tradition and also video calls each Fellow personally to tell them they’ve been accepted. Their reactions are a delight. Daisy treasures getting to know each individual’s background and personality, and this emphasis on the human being behind the resume fosters what one alumna called “a community that creates resilience.” More simply, when asked what differentiated the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship from competing awards for high achievers, one recipient told Daisy: “Yours has a heart.” The Fellows are an extension of Daisy’s own family—a testament to the legacy she and Paul built together and to Paul’s memory after his passing in 2013.
Meanwhile, Daisy maintains an active lifestyle, hosting parties, supporting causes, and staying connected to her friends and loved ones. As one of her friends reports: “I’d never turn down an invitation from Daisy.” One friend advises: “If you ever find yourself at a dinner party, and you dread going there because you don’t know anyone–pray that Daisy is the one you’re sitting next to.”
Along with her two sons, Daisy cherishes her five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, finding joy in the next generation. Her life is an assertion of her love of beauty, of a cosmopolitan ideal where the world thrives when we are curious about how others live, and of her constant drive for adventure and experience.