Rip Rapson

Richard "Rip" Rapson (born March 16, 1952) is an American attorney and the CEO of the Kresge Foundation. He began his career as a congressional aide to Donald M. Fraser during Fraser's last two terms in the United States House of Representatives. After attending Columbia Law School, Rapson joined the law firm of Leonard, Street & Deinard to practice law while also being on the board of several organizations. In 1989, Fraser, who had become mayor of Minneapolis, appointed Rapson as his deputy mayor and, in 1993, Rapson unsuccessfully ran for mayor to succeed Fraser.

After leaving the Minneapolis City Hall, Rapson became a fellow at the University of Minnesota and then was appointed president of the McKnight Foundation in Minneapolis. In 2006, he moved to the Detroit area to become CEO of the Kresge Foundation. He has led the foundation in a number of philanthropic endeavors to revitalize and rescue Detroit from bankruptcy.

Early life and education Richard "Rip" Rapson was born on March 16, 1952, in Bonn, Germany, to Mary and Ralph Rapson. and a prolific architect in the city. Mary said that their son was nicknamed Rip because he was "kicking and moving" even in the womb. He has a younger brother, Thomas ("Toby"), who also became an architect at their father's architectural firm.

Career After college, Rapson was hired by Arvonne Fraser, who ran her husband Donald M. Fraser's offices in Washington, D.C., when he was a United States representative from Minnesota. He 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.

Rapson then graduated from Columbia Law School with a J.D. and joined the law firm of Leonard, Street & Deinard. He became a partner at the firm and remained there from 1981 to 1988. He also was on the Library Board, the Board of Estimates and Taxation, and the boards of 13 other organizations in the city during that period.

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. Rapson relied on a grassroots campaign, receiving only 4% of his funding from political action committees.

In 2006, Rapson was appointed CEO of the Kresge Foundation, a foundation based in Troy, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Rapson helped organize a "grand bargain" as proposed by Judge Rosen, with other contributions from a number of foundations and the state of Michigan, to keep the art collection from being liquidated and help preserve pensions for city retirees, whose retirement funds were also at risk. and also spurred the development of the QLine streetcar project in downtown Detroit. 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. He is on the Detroit board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. As CEO of the Kresge Foundation, as of 2017, Rapson manages the organization's $3.8 billion in assets and 105 full-time employees.

Personal life Rapson married Gail Johnson in August 1989. They have two children.