95 Years Loved

Helen Leon has a particular way of describing how her philanthropic life has unfolded. “The Lord opens doors we have to go through,” she says. “What we think of as just coincidence is actually the Lord opening doors for us.”

Looking at Helen’s four decades of partnership with Orlando Health, it’s easy to see what she means. Her most recent commitment — a $1 million gift to the Orlando Health Children’s Pavilion — follows a giving history that reads like a life’s work.

I give to Orlando Health because I see it like one big family. After meeting many of the doctors and hospital leadership, I have witnessed their dedication, seen the love for what they do and observed their respect for the community they are serving.

Where It Began

Helen was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. In the 1950s, when few women were in the workforce at all, she worked as an office manager in Salt Lake City before answering a newspaper ad for a position in New York City — a decision that changed the course of her life.

In New York, during a famous city blackout, she met Edward Leon — an international business attorney. Helen and Edward married, traveled the world extensively and together gave back through a foundation they co-founded with Edward’s law partner.

Edward passed away in 1991, but they had visited Florida often, and in 2004, Helen eventually moved to Central Florida full-time to be closer to her son and five grandchildren.

A Passion for Partnership

Helen’s connection to Orlando Health began when she became a supporter of a growing cancer program. Over the years, her giving has followed Orlando Health’s growth at nearly every inflection point.

Her gift anchored a program that provides comprehensive care for children with neurological conditions including epilepsy and spina bifida. Thanks in large part to her gift, Orlando Health went on to become the first hospital system in Florida to offer in utero fetal surgery to repair spina bifida.

In 2022, Helen added a $1 million pledge in support of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Clinic within the neuroscience center — a program designed to serve children and families navigating one of the most underdiagnosed conditions in pediatric medicine.

Her newest commitment reaches another pinnacle at the intersection of giving and healthcare. Her gift to the Orlando Health Children’s Pavilion reflects exactly what Helen has always looked for in the programs she supports: a place where families facing difficult circumstances will find coordinated, compassionate care.

The pavilion has been systematically designed to change how children with complex medical needs receive care. Rather than moving between multiple locations and managing the coordination themselves, families will find specialists across disciplines working together in a single, purpose-built facility.

For children who require multiple specialists — the kind of patients the Leon Pediatric Neuroscience Center of Excellence serves every day — that model has immediate impact.