An Early Start on Estate Planning
Through planned gift in support of MIT scholarships, alumni couple from Class of ’11 expands opportunity

They met at MIT and married—and look back at their experience at the Institute as a formative time in their lives.

Now, Kimberly McManus ’11 and Spencer Parra ’11 of San Francisco have ensured their legacy will benefit MIT students well into the future.

They have established the Kimberly F. McManus and Spencer J. Parra Scholarship Fund to provide financial support for undergraduate students and included a charitable provision in their estate plan to further support scholarships at MIT.

In their 30s, the couple are among the youngest of the more than 1,800 members of the Katharine Dexter McCormick Society, which recognizes alumni and friends who have made a lifetime commitment to MIT through a bequest or life-income gift. Over the years, planned gifts and bequests have been among the largest sources of income for MIT’s endowment.

“When Kimberly and I got married in 2019, we were established in our careers and in our adult lives, and that was a good opportunity to get estate planning in order,” says Parra, executive vice president and head of product management at Radancy, a talent-acquisition software company.

“We’re young in the process, but it seemed like the right time to start that kind of planning,” he says. “We didn’t anticipate any significant changes in our lives, at least for the foreseeable future. So knowing we had that stability was a good signal for us to start that kind of planning.”

“MIT opened my mind to what is possible”
The couple say they wished to give something back to a school that had given each of them a great deal.

“MIT had a big impact on my life and career by opening doors to opportunities I might not have known about otherwise,” says McManus, deputy chief technology officer for AI at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“I had the chance to be with people who were some of the best at what they did in the world and to have all sorts of experiences and ideas and motivation to do useful things for the world,” she says.

A biology major at MIT, McManus went on to pursue graduate studies at Stanford, where she earned a master’s degree in biomedical informatics and a PhD in population genetics.

“MIT opened my mind to what is possible,” she says. “I appreciate the chance to give that opportunity to others.”

Parra says his experience as an aerospace engineering major at MIT gave him a grounding in collaboration and problem-solving. “I was in Course 16, and the number of students in my class was relatively small. The program really encouraged a close-knit community, with everybody working together. I carried that through my career in software development.”

The couple hope to see a ripple effect from the scholarship support they provide.

“It’s important to make sure MIT is affordable for kids who aspire to go there,” says Parra. “We hope other alumni will be inspired to consider how MIT helped their journey, to champion the work MIT is doing, and be generous enough to donate, as well.”

Written by Mark Sullivan and published on May 16, 2026.
Pictured above: McManus and Parra, who enjoy hiking, at Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, in fall 2024.

Contact the MIT Office of Gift Planning