Entrepreneurial Sons Follow Dad’s Support for the Technion

Michael Veloric’s late father, Daniel, started a long-term health care business when the field was just starting to grow. With the passage of the Medicare Act in 1965, he saw it would be sustainable, and eventually transformed his company into a publicly held, multifaceted health care enterprise with more than 5,000 employees.
“My father was an entrepreneur who went into businesses that no one else wanted to go into,” said Michael. He was also a professional saxophone player who played in the U.S. Army band after being drafted as a paratrooper. “Instead of jumping out of airplanes, he became part of the Army band.”
That enterprising spirit drew Daniel to the American Technion Society (ATS), where he was involved for 40 years until he passed away in 2020. The Technion’s commitment to entrepreneurship and innovation were values he shared. Now his equally entrepreneurial sons, Michael and Gary, are carrying the torch. “It was ingrained in me how important the Technion is for the protection of Israel and the Jews of the world,” said Michael, president of Veloric Holdings, which invests in ventures worldwide. “I was inspired by his legacy.”
Michael remembers his dad talking frequently about his involvement with the Technion and bringing him along to ATS events. When Michael was in Israel during college, his father suggested he visit the Technion. “They showed me the plaque where my dad’s name was inscribed. That memory stuck with me,” he said. “My father didn’t overtly say ‘Support the Technion,’ but I absorbed it.”
Today, Michael serves as president of the ATS–Philadelphia Board, is a member of the executive committee of the ATS National Board, and is an alternate member of the Technion Board of Governors (BOG). He plans to visit the Technion to attend the BOG meeting. Michael relishes the opportunity to meet brilliant scientists at ATS events, and has collected photographs with six Nobel laureates, including three from the Technion.
He is interested in projects that help to ensure Israel’s safety and is supporting a new building to house the Technion Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. Michael has also supported the Maurice and Ruben Rosen Solid State Institute, which focuses on many fields, including optoelectronics and quantum structures, and the Leadership Fund for Strategic Initiatives. Currently, he is helping his brother establish the Veloric Center for Entrepreneurship at Gary’s alma mater, American University.
“We hope to find ways to get the Technion involved with that center, and are also looking to enhance some of the entrepreneurial programs at the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech.” His mother, Renee, is also an ATS supporter.
Like Michael, his daughter, Dina, was in Israel during her junior year of college. She had planned to return to the U.S. just weeks before Michael would be visiting. But he persuaded her to stay, took her to campus, and showed her their family’s birthright, a Technion legacy. “Hopefully, when she and my son, Drew, are at a different stage in life, they might become the third generation of ATS supporters.”