President’s Address

In 2025, the Onassis Foundation celebrates 50 years since its founding, while also marking half a century since the passing of its founder, Aristotle Onassis. We have upheld our founder’s spirit of innovation and daring as core values, transforming his legacy into a living heritage. His leadership model has taken root in the DNA of our extended family, shaping our mindset and guiding our path forward. Building on this foundation with an innovative spirit and bold decisions, we have expanded the legacy entrusted to us, leaving a clear social footprint and keeping our eyes firmly on the future.

To tell the story of the Onassis Foundation is to gather together a wide range of visionary ideas and activities – pursuits that are not only commercial, but moreover cultural and intellectual in nature. The story of Aristotle Onassis’ life is marked by a series of events, some of them tragic, such as the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the Second World War, and the terrible loss of his son, Alexander.

He, however, actively engaged himself with events to bring about positive outcomes, thanks to his ability to create opportunities and mold the prevailing circumstances to his best possible advantage. He was a visionary entrepreneur, but also a man of culture and learning. A citizen of the world, and Greek to his core. It is for all these reasons that he is still remembered with warmth and love today by all, a full 50 years after his death. Aristotle Onassis is a paragon to be emulated, not just in Greece but across the world. And it is for all these reasons that the loss of his son led him, by necessity, to create this Foundation – in the name of his child, lost before he was able to fulfil his great promise and potential.

And so we too, at the Onassis Foundation, have education, culture, social welfare and entrepreneurship embedded in our DNA. We dare to take risks but always with our eyes wide open. Our minds open too in the search for new opportunities and possibilities offered by the present day.

During its first years of operation – with Christina Onassis and Professor Ioannis Georgakis as its elected presidents – our Foundation was still seeking its identity. From 1988 until 2005, Stelios Papadimitriou and his associates – Paul Ioannidis, Apostolos Zambelas and Theodoros Gavriilidis – laid down its commercial foundations, and also undertook its first major projects. The current Board of Directors is forward-looking, dynamic and active, made up of people who not only are distinguished names in their fields but also keenly engaged in the Foundation’s work. Last but not least, the Board of Directors is supported by Onassis Foundation executives who oversee the various sectors of our activities: culture, education, and health, as well as our financial and shipping investments.

Greece and the world have changed a great deal since January 1974, when Aristotle Onassis set down the declaration that established the Foundation, and placed humans once and for all at the heart of everything it does. Some things, however, never change: the need in all societies for ever more of their members to gain access to resources that improve their quality of life, for people’s power and potential to be unleashed, for the formulation of active and engaged citizens; for endeavors that, in short, contribute positively to social cohesion.

Societies are made better through collaborative action, mutual understanding and reciprocal support. One of the Foundation’s many roles is to work with the Greek State, standing firmly by its side, supplementing and aiding its efforts for the creation of conditions in which people are free to dream, to spread their wings and fly beyond the limits perhaps imposed upon them by their financial situation or social background.

These aims are achieved through the taking of action with tangible results, combining a respect for tradition with a vision for the future and an adaptability to the changing needs of the present. They are achieved through more than 7,808 scholarships awarded on merit since 1978, through the admission of 70,000 patients annually and the treatment of nearly 700,000 patients to date at the Onassis Hospital, and through the current initiative of the 22 Public Onassis Schools, which, over a twelve‑year horizon, will provide more than 22,000 junior (gymnasium) and senior (lyceum) students across the country with the experience of the public school of the future. They are also achieved through over 5,000 collaborations with cultural organizations, museums, institutions, and Modern Greek Studies departments and centers, from Boston to Buenos Aires and beyond, as well as through the provision of teaching materials and computer equipment to more than 1,300 state schools and special learning centers across Greece, and through comprehensive training programs for teachers. They are also achieved when the Acropolis was “bathed” in the new lighting of Eleftheria Deko in September 2020 amid the pandemic, projecting a message of optimism to the entire world.

They are achieved through the work of Onassis Stegi, which celebrates 15 years of operation in 2025, having hosted more than 15,000 productions and festivals and been visited by over 1,750,000 spectators.
Onassis Stegi remains the place where bold, restless and brave Greek artists can find the means they need to advance their work, a place where international collaborations are nurtured, a platform where the boundaries between the sciences, the arts, society, education, learning and politics are redrawn. It does not compete with other institutions; rather, it takes on what others dare not or will not risk doing. For us, daring in culture means resisting stereotypes, advocating for accessibility and inclusion, and creating meaningful connections among diverse cultures. Our initiatives will expand into new venues from 2025 onward.

Onassis Stegi forms the core of our work in culture, but part of the Foundation’s mission is to closely connect the local with the global. To this end, the Foundation practices cultural diplomacy through an ongoing series of international events and collaborations. In New York, anyone walking down Fifth Avenue encounters the Greek flag flying on the corner of 52nd Street – right where the heart of our subsidiary is located in the center of Manhattan. Since its founding in 2000, we have organized numerous successful exhibitions of archaeological interest over 18 years. In the fall of 2020, we changed course and proceeded to create ONX Studio in the same space, which now operates as one of the most pioneering digital “accelerators” of artistic creation, focusing on digital technology and augmented reality between Athens and New York. The Onassis Foundation in New York functions as an embassy for our cultural heritage and enhances the presence of contemporary Greek creation by bringing together both foreign and Greek artists and intellectuals, while collaborating with some of the most important cultural organizations in the US, including BAM, the Public Theater, and the New York Public Library.

Core concerns driving the Foundation’s activities are open societies, free access to research and knowledge, and the advancement of Greek culture. These can all be found condensed in the form of the Cavafy Archive, acquired by the Onassis Foundation at the end of 2012 to avert the threat of its dissolution and dispersal, and to ensure the entire collection remained in Greece. Digitized and completely re-documented in accordance with internationally recognized standards, the Cavafy Archive is now open to everyone, both the public and researchers. With the new home of the Cavafy Archive on Frynichou Street in Plaka, we have created a space for a body of work with global significance and a "bridge" to the Cavafy House in Alexandria.

The Onassis Foundation always looks to the future while keeping the true needs of Greek society in mind as they evolve over time. As part of this approach, our journey began in 1993 when the Onassis Foundation handed over the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center to the State. After 32 years and more than 2 million visits, a second center, the Onassis National Transplant Center, is set to open in the spring of 2025 and will become the focal point of transplant development in Greece.
The two centers, which share the same foundations, along with the Onassis Children’s Hospital, form the Onassis Hospital. It is a completely modern facility that is “new” not only in its design and equipment but also in its operations, infrastructure, and the tireless staff who work there. It offers specialized care for the uninsured, a hospital for everyone, because for us everything is a matter of culture, particularly when it comes to healthcare.

Anyone seeking the public face of the Onassis Foundation has in fact a plethora to choose from, be they cultural, educational, or for the public good. And this is the comparative advantage of our Onassis community – it embraces a diverse series of qualities. This inclusiveness allows for a surprising range of intersections between artists, doctors, entrepreneurs, academics, shipping leaders, philosophers, technocrats and activists who end up understanding one another through the words and values that unite them – and there are more such instances of consensus than you might expect.

This all springs from a daring entrepreneurial spirit that was also the greatest merit of our founder. In accordance with Aristotle Onassis’ will, 40% of all business profits are invested in programs for the public benefit. And this is where our origins lie: in the shipping, investment and business communities that form part of the Foundation’s very DNA.

And so, we go on. Creating the conditions, seeking out the ideas, and sparking the conversations that lead to a better society for all. Providing access to healthcare, education and culture. Questioning stereotypes, inspiring public curiosity, and precipitating the crystallization of an active and engaged citizenry. Investing in human capital and in ethical entrepreneurship, offering high-quality services in socially and environmentally safe settings, and building deep and lasting relationships rooted in transparency and trust with people who want to grow and develop, to unleash their power and potential, to give something back to society. People who want to leave whatever wears them down far behind.

Anthony S. Papadimitriou

President of the Onassis Foundation