Biography: Robert C. Macauley, Founder and Chairman of AmeriCares

Robert C. “Bob” Macauley is founder and chairman of AmeriCares, the nonprofit global health and disaster relief organization headquartered in Stamford, CT.  As someone with a lifelong passion to aid people in need, Bob founded AmeriCares in 1982.  Under his vision and leadership, AmeriCares has grown to become the leading nongovernmental organization delivering medicines, medical supplies and humanitarian aid around the world and across the United States.  Since its founding, AmeriCares has delivered more than $10 billion in aid to 147 countries.

 

Watch the Video:
"One Life at a Time"
Narrated by Bob Macauley

Bob became an active philanthropist early in his career, starting a charity in the early 1970s, the Shoeshine Foundation, whose mission was to shelter Vietnamese war orphans.  He remained active in several other charities when in April, 1975, a U.S. jet evacuating 243 Vietnamese orphans from Saigon crashed shortly after take-off, killing almost half of the children onboard.  Upon hearing the Pentagon would take 10 days to rescue the surviving children, Bob was determined to cut through the red tape.  He called Pan Am, chartered a jet and brought the survivors back to safety in the U.S., where the plane was met by President Gerald Ford.  After his check to Pan Am bounced, he and his wife, Leila, mortgaged their home.  “The bank got the house but we saved the kids—a fair trade,” recalled Leila.

In 1981, he was invited for a private audience with Pope John Paul II, who had learned of Macauley’s prodigious fundraising efforts as board chairman of New York City’s Covenant House.  His Holiness asked if he could raise funds to buy medicines for the people of Poland, who were then suffering under martial law.

“How could I say ‘no’ to the Pope?” Bob said, and with that, collaborated with two friends to collect $1.5 million worth of medicines donated by various U.S. pharmaceutical companies and medical supply manufacturers.  In March, 1982, the first airlift delivering medicines to Poland was launched, and AmeriCares was born.

AmeriCares has been delivering and distributing medical assistance to people in need ever since.  Bob has collaborated with kings, heads of state and Mother Teresa in support of AmeriCares mission to help more people live longer and healthier lives.  Bob has received numerous awards for his humanitarian service, including the President’s Volunteer Action Award from Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award in 1997.  The work of AmeriCares has been commended by Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush.

Macauley attended Greenwich Country Day School, Andover, and Yale. He interrupted his college education to volunteer for service in World War II, where he served in the Air Transport Command in North Africa. Upon returning to the United States he graduated magna cum laude from Yale (Class of 1945) with a degree in political science.

He followed his father into the paper business and founded Virginia Fibre, a paper company near Lynchburg, Virginia.  The company was sold to Greif Bros. Corporation in the 1990s and Mr. Macauley served as a director.