Yawkey Foundation is proud to be a founding supporter of the recently-opened Jackie Robinson Museum, located in New York City’s lower Manhattan neighborhood, celebrating the life and legacy of Jackie Robinson.
The Jackie Robinson Foundation (JRF) has enjoyed a long relationship with the Yawkey Foundation, beginning in 1988 when Tom Yawkey’s widow, Jean Yawkey, and the Yawkey Foundation sponsored the Boston leg of the Jackie Robinson Foundation’s national touring exhibit on the life and legacy of Jackie Robinson. In 1988, when Rachel Robinson and Jean Yawkey met at the Boston exhibit honoring Jackie Robinson, an inspiring conversation between them led to the Yawkey Foundation’s decades-long engagement with JRF, which included the first major gift to the Jackie Robinson Museum campaign in 2006.
The Yawkey Foundation had engaged further with JRF in 1988 when Jean Yawkey recruited for the team’s front office a talented JRF Scholar alumna with an interest in the business of baseball to serve as the Red Sox associate counsel. More than 30 years later, that former JRF Scholar, Elaine Weddington Steward, is among the longest-tenured members of the Red Sox front office and serves as the team’s vice president and club counsel. Since then, the Yawkey Foundation has continuously invested in the success of generations of JRF Scholars by funding JRF scholarships, which provide tuition grants, comprehensive mentoring, and internship placement.
The relationship ignited by Rachel Robinson and Jean Yawkey more than three decades ago established a legacy of mission-related collaboration between the Yawkey Foundation and JRF, based on a shared commitment to increasing access to education, career mobility, and leadership development for young adults.
Yawkey Foundation is honored by the Jackie Robinson Museum commemorating this relationship through the Yawkey Sports Gallery upon the museum’s opening in September 2022.
