$100,000 Gift Supports Academic Excellence at the College of Law
Gabriel Imperato (JD '77) and his wife Cynthia have made a $100,000 investment to support academic excellence at DePaul College of Law. Their generosity will create the Gabriel and Cynthia Imperato Fund for Academic Excellence to advance faculty research and scholarship at the law school.
“Through this gift, the Imperatos have shown their dedication to DePaul Law and their commitment to DePaul Law's continued academic excellence and reputational rise," says Dean Jennifer Rosato Perea. “Their gift will inspire our faculty to continue to do their very best work. The Imperatos are true DePaul Law champions."
The Imperato Fund for Academic Excellence will highlight the College of Law's academic strengths and prestige by investing in faculty scholarship, including research that will be featured in law review articles.
According to Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Professional Development Wendy Netter Epstein, “The College of Law has long been committed to academic excellence across a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary issues. The Imperatos' generous gift will allow us to further invest in the high-impact scholarly work being done by students and faculty alike—work that furthers valuable debate and discourse and promotes public policy that improves our world."
DePaul College of Law faculty continually strive to make a difference as public academics. Throughout the pandemic, they wrote and contributed to the public discourse on vaccines, telehealth, crisis standards of care, issues of equity and a right to repair. Over the last year, law faculty have made important scholarly contributions in the areas of business and tax law, constitutional law and legal history, health and disability law, intellectual property and culturalheritage law, and Jewish law. To learn more about the law faculty's recent accomplishments, please click here.
This gift is a continuation of the Imperatos' longtime generosity to the College of Law. In 2019, they made a $100,000 commitment to sustain the excellence of DePaul's top-ranked health law program, including seed funding to launch the law school's annual health care compliance conference.
Gabriel Imperato is a partner at Nelson Mullins, a full-service law firm with 25 offices serving clients in more than 100 practice areas. Based in Fort Lauderdale, FL, Imperato assists and advises health care organizations on corporate governance and compliance matters, and he represents clients accused of health care fraud. He is a nationally recognized leader in health care law, frequently speaking at events and conferences on compliance and ethics. He also is a long-time board member and past president of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) and the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA), and he is a faculty member for the HCCA Compliance Academy. Since 2006, Imperato annually has been recognized as a Florida Super Lawyer and as one of The Best Lawyers in America for Health Care Law. In 2012, he was named Miami Health Care Law Lawyer of the Year.
Cynthia Imperato retired from the Broward Circuit Court bench in 2016 after 13 years of service. She currently chairs the board of the Broward County Chapter of the American Red Cross and serves on the board of the St. Thomas More Society of Broward County.