OFFICERS of THE JACKIE ROBINSON FOUNDATION

Rachel Robinson

Corporate leader, 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. Since her husband's premature death at age 54, Ms. Robinson has used her ability and his legacy to further the causes they so ardently supported.
A career nurse, Ms. Robinson earned her masters degree in psychiatric nursing worked as a researcher at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Department of Social and Community Psychiatry, which she held for five years. Ms. Robinson then became Director of Nursing for the Connecticut Mental Health Center and an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Yale University.

Following the death of her husband in 1972, Robinson incorporated the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, which had been founded to build 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 scholarships and leadership training.

After years at the head of the Foundation's board, Ms. Robinson stepped down as chairwoman in 1996. That same year, she authored "Jackie Robinson An Intimate Portrait" published by Abrams Publishing Company. 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. In addition, St. John's University, Springfield College, MacAlester College, Boston College, Suffolk University, New York University, Connecticut College and the University of Massachusetts have conferred upon her honorary doctorates.

Ms. Robinson has two children and ten grandchildren.