Who Is Susan Dell? Michael Dell’s Wife and the $6.25 Billion Gift to Kids

• Susan Dell, wife of Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, stood next to President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Oct. 7, and asked parents to claim their children’s Trump Accounts.
• She and Michael pledged $6.25 billion to put $250 into the accounts of 25 million children. More than 10 million have received it so far.
• She co-founded and chairs the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, started her own fashion label and has run marathons and triathlons.

Susan Dell is a philanthropist, the co-founder and chair of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and, since 1989, the wife of Michael Dell, who founded the computer company that carries his name. She is 62.

She became one of the most searched names in the country after Wednesday, Oct. 7, when she spoke in the Oval Office at an event marking the automatic enrollment of nearly 70 million children in Trump Accounts, the investment accounts created by last year’s tax law.

Who is Susan Dell?

She was born Susan Lieberman and met Michael on a blind date in 1988. They married in October 1989 in a Jewish ceremony and have four children: Kira, Alexa and twins Zachary and Juliette.

In 1999 the couple started the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which she has chaired since. The foundation says the two have made $10 billion in commitments since then, much of it in Austin, Texas, where they live: Dell Children’s Medical Center, the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas and programs on homelessness.

Outside the foundation, she founded a fashion label, Phi, and has run marathons and triathlons. She served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and is in the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, in part for her work helping families after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

Her husband started the company that became Dell from his University of Texas dorm room in 1984. Bloomberg’s billionaires index put the family fortune at nearly $150 billion last December.

Why was Susan Dell at the White House?

The Oval Office event started at 1 p.m. ET. Trump sat at his desk with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on one side and, on the other, Sen. Ted Cruz and the Dells, with children holding a banner that read “Thank you for Trump accounts.”

Susan Dell spoke to parents directly. She said the couple had received letters from parents, children and grandparents about kids who want to become doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs, and that knowing “someone believes in you and your future” matters as much as the money.

So parents and grandparents, please claim your child’s account. These accounts are ready. They’re waiting for you, and they have money in them.

Susan Dell, in the Oval Office, Oct. 7

Trump then turned to her husband. “Good job, Michael. Is she thinking about running for office?” he asked. Michael Dell answered, “No.” Trump added: “I’ll endorse her immediately. She has my complete and total endorsement.”

Her appearance drew a wave of comments on social media, as it did after the couple’s first White House event in December. She has not responded to them. Here is the full event, as the White House posted it.

What is the Dells’ $250 gift, and who gets it?

The Dells announced the pledge at the White House on Dec. 2, 2025: $250 each for 25 million children aged 10 and under who were born before 2025 and so missed the government’s own $1,000 deposit. Children in ZIP codes where the median income is below $150,000 come first.

More than 10 million children had received it by Wednesday, about $2.6 billion, with the rest of the $6.25 billion expected to be invested by Friday, Oct. 9.

Here is how the accounts work, according to the Treasury and the White House:

• Who has one: since Oct. 1, every child under 18 with a Social Security number has an account, opened automatically.
• What parents have to do: claim it in the official Trump Accounts app, which checks the parent’s and the child’s identity.
• The $1,000: only for children born from 2025 through 2028, and only after a parent claims the account and requests it.
• Who else can add money: family and friends, up to $5,000 a year in total; employers can put in up to $2,500 of that.
• When the child can use it: not before 18. The money is meant for things like school, a first home, a business or retirement.

Michael Dell also defended a new rule that lets charities donate individual company stocks to the accounts, which critics say ties a child’s savings to a single company. “The alternative is they didn’t have it, right?” he told Yahoo Finance.

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— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: The White House, “Trump Accounts Put 70 Million Kids on the Path to Financial Freedom,” Oct. 7, 2026, and the official video of the event; White House pool reports, Oct. 7, 2026 (The American Presidency Project); Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; ABC News (Catherine Alaimo); Yahoo Finance (Jennifer Schonberger); NBC News (Steve Kopack), Dec. 2, 2025; FOX 5 New York (Catherine Stoddard); UNILAD Tech (Tom Chapman); Just Jared (Tommy Pisani); Primetimer (Anuj Basak). Photos: Official White House Photo; Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.