World’s richest woman Alice Walton builds a $250 million tuition-free medical school

For Alice Walton, much of the attention around her wealth comes from an asset she did not build herself. The youngest child of Walmart founder Sam Walton has remained a major shareholder in the retail giant, even as her own career moved away from the company. Her fortune has continued to rise with the value of the family’s Walmart holdings. In the year to March 2026, Forbes estimated that her net worth increased by about $33 billion, taking it to almost $120 billion. Walton, now 76, is not a Walmart executive or board member. Her public work in recent years has instead centred on art, philanthropy and a growing interest in medicine.

Alice Walton’s early career took her from Walmart to financeWalton briefly worked for Walmart after graduating from Trinity University in 1971. Her early role was as a buyer of children's clothing, but she did not remain with the retailer for long. She moved into finance, working as a stockbroker at E.F. Hutton before taking on investment responsibilities at Arvest, the family-owned bank.

As reported by Bloomberg, in 1988, Walton established her own investment bank, Llama Co. The business eventually closed after the 1998 bond market crash. Her professional history therefore sits somewhat apart from the Walmart retail operation that accounts for most of her present wealth.

She still has a substantial connection to the family's business interests. Walton co-manages Walton Enterprises, one of the family holding companies associated with control of Walmart. The retailer's 2026 proxy statement shows the scale of those family holdings, with Walton Enterprises holding about 3 billion Walmart shares directly and voting another 513 million shares held through the Walton Family Holdings Trust, as reported by Fortune.

Walton also owns millions of Walmart shares directly. But the larger part of her fortune is tied to the family structures holding the retailer's stock. As the share price changes, so does the value of that stake.

Inside Alice Walton’s $250 million medical education projectWalton's work outside Walmart has increasingly moved towards medicine. In 2021, she established the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Arkansas, the city where she grew up and where Walmart is headquartered. She committed $250 million to the medical school, which offers a four-year degree programme. Its first students arrived in 2025, with an inaugural class of 48. The school has said that tuition will be waived for its first five cohorts, although students remain responsible for expenses such as fees and living costs.

The second cohort began this autumn, bringing the total number of students to 96. The institution is designed around an approach that combines conventional medical training with subjects including art and broader aspects of wellbeing.

Walton has spoken about nutrition and exercise as areas she believes doctors need more preparation in, particularly because conventional healthcare payment structures do not always reward the time spent discussing them with patients. Her comments to PBS NewsHour, “The real problem with health care is that there’s no incentive in the payment system for doctors to spend time helping you learn what good nutrition is, how important exercise is”.

Alice Walton’s long-standing art interest enters medical trainingThe medical school is part of a broader interest Walton has developed in connecting medicine with the arts. She has described the combination as a deliberate part of the school's identity rather than treating medical education as a purely scientific exercise.

That approach is also connected to Walton's long-standing involvement with art. Her philanthropy has included major cultural projects, while the medical school brings some of those interests into a professional setting. The institution is still young, so its eventual impact will take time to assess. For now, its first two cohorts represent the beginning of the model Walton set out to establish in Bentonville.

Alice Walton commits $350 million to a new healthcare campusThe medical school is not the only healthcare project associated with Walton's foundation. On September 17, the Alice L. Walton Foundation joined Mercy and Cleveland Clinic for the groundbreaking of a new health campus in Bentonville. According to Fortune, the foundation is committing $350 million towards a planned 250-bed hospital and cancer centre. The first building is a specialty care centre focused on cardiac services, with an opening scheduled for 2029.

The project is intended to bring hospital care, specialist services, research and technology together in northwest Arkansas. Walton has also linked the development to improving healthcare access for rural communities in Arkansas and the surrounding region.

Walton is not the only billionaire funding free medical educationThe decision to waive tuition for the first groups of students at Walton's medical school comes amid several large philanthropic commitments to medical education in the United States. In 2024, educator Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine, allowing the institution to make tuition free for its students. Michael Bloomberg's philanthropy also committed $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University to help cover medical student tuition.

Those donations were directed towards medical schools that were already operating. Walton's approach has been different in that her money helped establish a new institution as well as supporting its early students. For Walton, medicine has therefore become more than a charitable funding area. It now includes an educational institution, a developing healthcare campus and a stated interest in changing how future doctors are trained.

Her philanthropy grows while Walmart remains the financial foundationDespite the shift in her public work, Walton's financial position remains closely linked to the company founded by her father. She does not run Walmart and does not sit on its board, but the family's extensive ownership of the retailer continues to underpin her wealth.

Forbes estimated her fortune at nearly $120 billion in March 2026, following an increase of roughly $33 billion over the previous year. That rise was largely a consequence of the value of her Walmart holdings rather than income from operating a business of her own.

Her medical projects are now moving into their next phase. The school has begun its second year of students, while construction on the wider health campus has started, with the first specialist facility expected to open in 2029.