ACS Community Leadership Award

Star Pattern Green

The ACS Community Leadership Award honors an individual, corporation or group that embodies the ACS Core Values: Curiosity, Courage, Compassion and Integrity. 

The Dalio Family is named the ACS 2024 Community Leadership Honorees for their leadership commitment to empower the next generation. Their investment in our globally-leading Design, Technology and Innovation Space on the new campus, makes it possible for us to share our innovative technology program with other schools and advance technology education for thousands of students.  We thank The Dalio Family for embodying our core values and for their invaluable partnership with our school and to Abu Dhabi. 

2024 HONOREES

Dalio Family Photo

The Dalio Family
Champions of Digital Empowerment

The Dalio family’s first philanthropic activities began in 1995 when Ray and Barbara sent their 11-year-old son, Matt, to live and attend school in China. While there, he visited an orphanage and realized he could provide lifesaving help to orphans with special needs. In the years following Matt’s return from China, he founded the China Care Foundation, which raised nearly $15 million and saved the lives of thousands of special needs children. The family’s journey with China Care Foundation inspired the family to establish the Dalio Foundation in 2003, which later became part of Dalio Philanthropies.

One of Dalio Philanthropies’ core values is to create equal opportunity, especially by providing better access to quality education, healthcare, capital and technology. The organization operates three primary programs in the areas of education and serving youth (Dalio Education), ocean exploration and protection (OceanX), and digital access (Endless). 

Having witnessed ACS’s dedication to using technology to enable students' passion and creativity throughout the past decade, the Dalios were inspired to collaborate further. Endless, an initiative founded by Matt Dalio that aims to empower students to be creators and not consumers of technology, has collaborated with ACS to bring innovative technology education to schools globally.

Today, ACS, with the Dalio family's support, extends its award-winning technology education model to schools with limited resources, empowering the next generation of innovators. The historic move to ACS' new campus is a testament to the transformative power of this partnership, and ACS is grateful for the Dalio family's leadership in advancing digital empowerment and innovation in education. 

Previous Honorees

2023 HE Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak
ACS '93 Alumnus (First Graduating Class), Current ACS Parent and CEO of Mubadala

2020  HE Sheikh Nahayan bin Mabarak Al Nahayan 
Cabinet Minister, UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence

2019  HE Saif Ghobash (posthumously)
Award Presentation Video
First UAE Foreign Minister and Former ACS Parent & Board Trustee

2018  Catherine Miles-Flynn, Kimberley Dittrich, Anne Russell
ACS Service Learning Directors

2017  Reem Al Fahim
ACS ‘99 Alumna & Founder of Sedra Foundation

2016  Sallama Al Sayegh
Former ACS Parent & Trustee