SiliconBeat

Stuart Moldaw, the founder of the Ross Dress For Less retail chain, died May 24 “following a brief illness,” according to a press release the company issued Tuesday. He was 81. In 1982, Moldaw founded the Ross chain, which began as a six-store chain headquartered in the Bay Area and now has 838 in 27 states. He served as chairman of its board until 1993 and remained as a director ever since. He was also a co-founder of U.S. Venture Partners, the Menlo Park venture capital firm, as well as a founding investor in Gymboree, the children’s clothing and accessory chain store that began life in the Bay Area in 1976 as a maker of parent-child play programs.

Moldaw was also described as an active philanthropist, serving on the boards of numerous San Francisco Bay Area non-profit agencies and organizations, including the Moldaw-Zaffaroni Boys and Girls Club of East Palo Alto, REDF, Communities in Schools, the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and the San Francisco Urban League. He also was a member of the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

He was appointed by President Clinton to serve as a “”public delegate” to the U.S. Mission at the United Nations in 1993 and as chairman of the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars in 1996. In 2000, Governor Gray Davis appointed Moldaw to chair California’s World Trade Commission, and two years later to serve as commissioner on the state’s Little Hoover Commission, a bipartisan, independent state body that promotes efficiency and effectiveness in state programs.

Moldaw’s family is planning a private service and has requested that any memorial gifts be made to The Moldaw-Zaffaroni Boys and Girls Club of East Palo Alto, Eastside College
Preparatory School, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco.