Bernard Rapoport

February 5-6, 2009
Audre & Bernard Rapoport Civic Renewal & Community Engagement Conference and Dinner


Bernard Rapoport is the 2007 recipient of the inaugural Service-Learning, Civic Engagement and Community Renewal Award.

Bernard Rapoport has lived the American Dream. Born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in San Antonio, Texas in 1917, he grew up in modest circumstances and worked his way through the University of Texas during the Great Depression. In 1951, he and a partner founded the American Income Life Insurance Company, which he developed into a multi-million dollar business. Using his wealth to support a host of local, national, and international organizations, Rapoport was named by Fortune magazine as one of America’s forty most generous philanthropists, unstinting in his support for education, social justice, and liberal political causes.

In his book, “Being Rapoport” he recalls a life of hard work and a philosophy of giving back to the community that made him a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. Mr. Rapoport believes that his early experiences of poverty and his youthful acquaintance with Marxists and New Deal economists shaped him into a capitalist with a conscience, one who, he says, “could never understand why people who have a lot aren’t willing to share.”

Mr. Rapoport is a supporter of Democrats from Ralph Yarborough to former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle to his good friends Bill and Hilary Clinton, an underwriter of the political journal The Texas Observer, a regent of the University of Texas System, a supporter of the state of Israel, and a champion of at-risk students.

Bernard Rapoport lives in Waco, Texas, where he is head of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation.

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