Civil rights activist, professor, nurse, wife, and mother, Rachel Isum Robinson is a woman of enormous accomplishments, her own and those achieved jointly with her husband, Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when he played with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Together the couple supported numerous causes, but particularly civil rights in and out of the sports sphere.

Following the death of her husband in 1972, Robinson incorporated the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, which was founded to build and manage housing for people of moderate and low incomes. A year later, Ms. Robinson created the Jackie Robinson Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide college scholarships and leadership training.

A career nurse, Robinson earned her masters degree in psychiatric nursing from New York University and worked as a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Department of Social and Community Psychiatry. Robinson then became Director of Nursing for the Connecticut Mental Health Center and an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Yale University.

After years at the head of the Foundation's board, Robinson stepped down as chairwoman in 1996. That same year, she authored "Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait," published by Abrams Publishing Company. Ms. Robinson has received numerous awards including the Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Equitable Life Black achiever's Award and the Associated Black Charities Black History Makers Award.