18 Facts About Rip Rapson

Richard "Rip" Rapson was born on March 16,1952 and is an American attorney and philanthropist serving as the CEO of the Kresge Foundation.

Rip Rapson began his career as a congressional aide to Donald M Fraser during Fraser's last two terms in the United States House of Representatives.

Rip Rapson has led the foundation in a number of philanthropic endeavors to revitalize and rescue Detroit from bankruptcy.

Richard "Rip" Rapson was born on March 16,1952, in Bonn, Germany, to Mary and Ralph Rapson.

Rip Rapson has a younger brother, Thomas, who became an architect at their father's architectural firm.

At Marshall-University High School, Rip Rapson was a baseball pitcher, played basketball, tennis and learned to play the trumpet.

Rip Rapson chose to attend Pomona College in California which he believed had a good tennis team.

Rip Rapson was a congressional aide from 1974 to 1978 during Fraser's last two terms in the US congress.

Rip Rapson worked as a liaison between Fraser's Washington office and his local district office in Minneapolis as well as contributing to the writing and passage of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of 1978 to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota.

Rip Rapson became a partner at the firm and remained there from 1981 to 1988.

Rip Rapson served on the Library Board, the Board of Estimates and Taxation, and the boards of 13 other organizations in the city during that period.

Rip Rapson was responsible for the creation of a $400 million Neighborhood Revitalization Program and chaired its implementation committee.

Rip Rapson ran in the 1993 Minneapolis mayoral elections against Richard Jefferson, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and Sharon Sayles-Belton, president of the city council.

Rip Rapson then served for six years as president of the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis.

In 2006, Rip Rapson was appointed CEO of the Kresge Foundation, a foundation based in Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.

Rip Rapson was responsible for a number of large grant programs made by the foundation including a $100-million grant to bring financial stability to the Detroit Institute of Arts whose art collection was owned by the city when it went bankrupt in 2013 and was being considered for sale to cover the city's debt.

Rip Rapson is a founding member on the board of directors of M-1 Rail, a non-profit organization which built, owns, and operates the QLine.

Rip Rapson serves on the Detroit board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.