Stephen Michael Ross (born May 10, 1940) is an American real estate developer, philanthropist, and sports team owner. Ross is the chairman and majority owner of The Related Companies, a global real estate development firm he founded in 1972. Related is best known for developing the Deutsche Bank Center, where Ross lives and works, as well as the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project. According to Forbes magazine, Ross has a net worth of $7.6 billion in 2020, ranking him 185 on Forbes Billionaires List in 2020. Having doubled his net worth since 2008, he paid no income taxes in the next decade utilizing the losses on the properties he owned. Ross is also the principal owner of the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium. Ross is a major benefactor of his alma mater, the University of Michigan; with lifetime contributions of $478 million to the university, he is the largest donor in the university's history. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, his higher education gifts rank behind only those of fellow American billionaire New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The University of Michigan renamed its business school to the Ross School of Business in Ross's honor, in 2004, after he made a $100 million gift to fund a new business-school building. The Stephen M. Ross Academic Center was completed in winter 2006. In September 2013, Ross donated $200 million to the university ($100 million to the business school and $100 million to Michigan athletics), the largest single gift in the history of the university; the University of Michigan announced plans to rename the university's athletics campus in his honor. In 2020, Ross announced an additional $100 million donation to kickstart fundraising for the construction of the University of Michigan Detroit Center for Innovation. Early life and education Born and raised in Detroit, Stephen Michael Ross grew up in a Jewish family. He first attended Mumford High School in Detroit and later graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School. He attended the University of Florida for two years before transferring to the University of Michigan, where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1962. He later received a Juris Doctor from Wayne State University in 1965 and a Master of Laws in Taxation from the New York University School of Law in 1966. These later degrees were financed by a loan from his uncle, the businessman Max Fisher, who Ross