Why a CEO Is Staying Connected to SI, Even After Retirement

Longtime Satell Institute member Rip Collins has left the corporate world. But his relationship with SI is as robust as ever.

Collins: “I sold my company, but I still want to be involved.”

After an impressive, decades-long career in business, Satell Institute member Rip Collins recently decided to retire. As he contemplated what his new life would look like, he was determined to stay connected to two important organizations.

One is Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School, where Collins has a long association and currently serves as board chair. The other is the Satell Institute, whose mission Collins believes in and where he’s been an active and engaged participant.

“I told Regina [Black-Lennox, SI’s executive vice president] that I still want to be invited to the CEO conferences,” Collins says. “I sold my company, but I still want to be involved.”

In many ways Collins, now a member of SI as an individual philanthropist and through a small LLC he created, is a prime example of how CEOs and business leaders can stay committed to Corporate Social Responsibility even as they launch new chapters in their lives — by using their skills to help nonprofits, and by continuing to maintain ties with the Satell Institute.

A Belief In Free Enterprise — and Giving Back

A graduate of Harvard Business School, Collins eventually rose to become CEO of The Matworks, a flooring company. In time he also took the helm of TEC Services, a commercial cleaning outfit.

As he puts it, “I’m a big free-enterprise person.” But Collins also believes deeply in business leaders giving back to the community, not just by writing checks but by investing their time.

One way Collins has done that is through Cristo Rey Philadelphia High School, the private college prep school that serves low-income students in Philadelphia and embraces a robust work-study program as part of its educational philosophy. Collins met Cristo Rey Philadelphia’s founder, former Deloitte Consulting partner John McConnell, at a fundraiser one evening, and before long he was volunteering his time, including eventually joining the board.

It was through Cristo Rey that Collins was initially introduced to the Satell Institute, and he and his company became corporate members in 2021.

To Collins, SI’s greatest strength is its events — the CEO conferences and the Nonprofit Summits the organization hosts each year. The gatherings allow business leaders to spend time with each other, as well as with the leaders of nonprofits. “I love that Satell brings people together. Getting for-profit and non-profit leaders collaborating creates tremendous value for both,” he says.

It’s an experience he didn’t want to give up, even though he now wears a different hat.

Success at Cristo Rey

Collins, who became board chair of Cristo Rey Philadelphia in 2023, knows that business executives have much to offer nonprofits. Their skill sets and experiences are often different from those of nonprofit leaders, and when they team up great things can happen.

Cristo Rey is certainly a prime example of that. More than 95 percent of its students go on to college, and they achieve a college graduation rate four times that of their inner city peers. In addition to giving students the support and high expectations that help them thrive, Cristo Rey takes a pragmatic approach to helping kids think about careers.

“We work with them to figure out what they’re good at, what they like to do, and what the world is going to pay for,” says Collins, who spends about 20 hours per week on Cristo Rey matters. “It’s like a Venn diagram with three circles. Shoot for the middle part to find a career that you enjoy and pays enough for financial independence in Philadelphia.”

Cristo Rey enhances that approach with its robust work-study program, which involves more than 100 employment partners in the Philadelphia region. The program exposes kids to the real work world, helping them see what’s possible while giving them skills they’ll use forever. “We like to say,  ‘You can’t become what you can’t see,’ so we show students what they can become by working alongside career professionals,” says Collins.

Taken all together, it embodies what the Satell Institute is all about — demonstrating the great things that can happen when the business community and nonprofits work together.