Philanthropy
In 2006, Reisman founded the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation, whose mission is to enrich the libraries in under-resourced public schools. Since its inception, the group has donated millions of books to over 3,000 Canadian public elementary school libraries.[20]
In 2005, she and her husband Gerald Schwartz founded the HESEG Foundation, which provides scholarships to former Israeli "lone soldiers." Lone soldiers are generally non-Israelis serving as volunteers in the Israeli military, or individuals who are serving in the IDF after immigrating to Israel. Such soldiers are "lone" in the sense that they do not have immediate family in the country.
Mount Sinai Hospital announced in December 2013 that a $15 million gift from Reisman and Schwartz would be used to "reshape emergency medicine" at the facility.[21][22]
The Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation donated $5.3 million to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia in late 2018 to create scholarships, bursaries and increased recruitment of business students.[23]
In March 2019, the University of Toronto announced that Schwartz and Reisman were giving the university $100 million to build a 750,000-square foot innovation centre, through The Gerald Schwartz & Heather Reisman Foundation. According to Reisman, the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus will be used to improve technology, particularly artificial intelligence, and how the public can relate to it. One of the two towers will house the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence while the other will include labs for research in regenerative medicine, genetics and precision medicine.[24][25]
