H. Roy Kaplan: A Balm Against Bigotry (Maddux Business Report) Originally published in 2004

By Bob Andelman

Today, H. Roy Kaplan might just be the most admired, most principled man in all of Tampa Bay. As executive director of the National Conference for Community and Justice-Tampa Bay Region, he has long been the balm many public and private organizations applied when the wounds of bigotry, prejudice or discrimination infected their clients or employees.

But 15 years ago, when he first took the job, Kaplan was a wreck by the side of the road, desperately in need of a tow truck that could carry him away from the organization’s troubles – and his own.
• • •
The Kaplans moved to Tampa in 1986. Both were academics; Mary joined the University of South Florida as a member of the faculty for the school of Aging Studies; Roy was a sociology professor with 20 years of experience at State University of New York (Buffalo) and then at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, where he commuted 120 miles each way to work several times a week before catching on two years later as a visiting associate at the University of Tampa. But UT wasn’t a good fit and Kaplan sought something better.

He heard that Leslie Stein, then corporate counsel at GTE (now Verizon, from which she recently retired) was heading the search for a new executive director for what was then called the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Kaplan didn’t know anything about the organization’s operation or mission, although he did remember its infectious jingle from TV commercials in the 1960s:

Don’t be a schmo, Joe

Get in the know, Joe

Religion and race

Just don’t count in this place…

“Can you give me a shot?” he asked Stein.

It’s hard to imagine what Kaplan was thinking. Certainly, he felt tremendous pressure to earn more income. But a career college professor running a charitable organization that relies on the largess of corporate donations? He was an academician, pure and simple. He didn’t even wear a jacket and tie to the job interview – he couldn’t. He didn’t own one.

Kaplan gave Stein a copy of his book, American Minorities and Economic Opportunity (Peacock Publishers, 1977). There was something about the befuddled professor she liked and she invited him back for a second interview with the rest of the search committee. Just that was amazing: he survived a pool of 160 initial applicants.

This time, he arrived on time – still sans jacket and tie – and encountered another job candidate in the waiting area. The man was agitated, chain-smoking one cigarette after another.

“Have you seen the office?” he asked Kaplan.

“No,” Kaplan said.

“You won’t believe it!” the other man said between long drags.

What was the big deal about the office? Kaplan wondered. How bad could it be in the opulent Tampa City Center? Maybe it was too nice!

When it was Kaplan’s turn to face the committee, someone asked, “Are you a good fundraiser?”

“Well,” he said, “I have written grant applications. I believe that if you have good programs, the money will follow.”

He got the job.

But the celebration was short-lived.

It turned out that the NCCJ office was one room, sans air conditioning, in a building on Marion Street across from the First United Methodist Church and the St. Paul AME Church. From his window, he could see one of the churches handing out sandwiches to homeless people. They, in turn, ate the meat and threw the bread to the pigeons.


Kaplan’s starting pay was $28,000; the entire budget of the Tampa Bay chapter of NCCJ, founded in 1947, was a mere $70,000 in 1988. He inherited an organization (www.nccjtampabay.org) that was already in the hole for thousands of dollars. That first year, despite driving 30,000 miles on NCCJ business, he didn’t claim any expenses; they couldn’t be reimbursed, anyway. He didn’t take any vacation time for the first couple years.

He discovered that he reported to not one but two boards of directors. One was in Hillsborough County, one in Pinellas. The first time he called a board meeting in Hillsborough County, he, Stein and one other person were the only directors that showed up.

“I went back to my office and started checking up on the ‘board,’” he recalls. “Two members were deceased! The rest didn’t care or weren’t cultivated.”

The results in Pinellas weren’t any more encouraging.

As if all this wasn’t enough pressure, shortly before he was hired, Kaplan was diagnosed with clinical depression. “I lost 14 pounds,” he says. “I got nervous. I couldn’t eat. It’s not pleasant. I joined an over-30 baseball team. I’m a catcher, but they put me in the outfield. It was a disaster. I was frantic. A psychiatrist put me on medication.”

In six months, Kaplan’s health improved. He got off the meds and never went back.

And the NCCJ got its act together, too.
• • •
Despite a complete lack of experience, personal problems and no sense of how far over his head he was getting himself, Roy Kaplan took a group on the verge of erasing itself from existence and transformed it into a Tampa Bay – and national – cultural powerhouse.

Today, the NCCJ has 12 employees, a budget of $1.1 million and “clients” including JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and Pinellas County Schools. Its home is on the grounds of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida in St. Petersburg (formerly Holy Cross Episcopal Church), which gives it a break on rent because it believes in the NCCJ’s mission. The once-dueling Hillsborough and Pinellas county NCCJ boards – to which Kaplan reported – joined operations in 1989.

The Tampa Bay chapter is now NCCJ’s 5th largest by revenue and largest by staff.

Until nearly the end of the 20th century, the identity of the organization remained primarily Christian and Jewish. But 10 years ago, the name was changed to the National Conference for Community and Justice in an effort to be more inclusive.

“We’re not a religious organization,” Kaplan says. “Because of increasing diversity, we changed the title. Groups felt left out.”
• • •
As he took charge of the NCCJ, Kaplan began molding the Tampa Bay chapter’s mission to his own strengths, aiming its message in particular at area youth through multicultural educational outreach programs such as “Youth As Resources,” “Youth Congress,” “Anytown” and “Partners for Peace.”

Fifteen years later, every high school in Pinellas has a committee of students, teachers, parents and a principal working on its own tailored, multicultural diversity program.


“One of Roy’s greatest pleasures is the youth programs that NCCJ manages,” says Teddy Pierre, president of the Pascall Company, a Tampa-based human resources consulting firm specializing in diversity recruitment. Pierre is on the board of NCCJ.

A year after launching the Pinellas schools program, Kaplan introduced the first “Anytown” program in Florida. This weeklong, residential, multicultural training program for teens ages 14 to 18 is an intensive, six-night/seven-day, all-expenses paid summer course. “After the first one, in 1991, I swore I’d never do another,” Kaplan says. “We had some pretty disturbed kids.”

Over time, it got easier. And while many local NCCJ chapters don’t offer them at all, the Tampa Bay chapter puts on more than any other in the U.S., training 400 students every year. The Juvenile Welfare Board and private foundations subsidize the $300,000 annual cost.
• • •
Among Roy Kaplan’s most profound beliefs is that race is a great debilitator of otherwise great people.

“He sees no color; he just sees people,” says Pierre. “At times, he will be almost boisterous in his convictions. He gets riled up to the point where we say, ‘It’s okay, Roy! Not everybody is on board yet, but they will be.’ His face gets a little red at those times. He doesn’t see why others don’t see it as quickly as he does. “Why don’t they see this as a priority?’ he says. ‘It’s as plain as day! Why don’t they see it?’”

Kaplan organized the Interfaith Leaders Roundtable as a means of provoking dialogue among area clergy. As quite the talker himself, he believes that dialoguing makes differences melt away.

“He has worked so hard to get religious groups together,” Pierre marvels. “You wonder, does this man have a life outside of NCCJ? There are times when he’s out in the community hosting dialogues three or four nights a week, talking about issues of importance to the community. That doesn’t get a lot of publicity. He does it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Jim Barrens, executive director of The Center for Catholic/Jewish Studies at St. Leo University, calls Kaplan “a real, amazing gift to our community. I always think of him as the ‘go-to’ guy. He’s the guy who – whenever there was an incident of bigotry or prejudice – everyone gravitated to. And that came from years and years of plowing the fields. So many times, things happen and communities all around went to Roy and got a response and help dealing with it.”

Jim Albright is the chairman of the NCCJ board of directors, although he is perhaps best known for the eight years he spent as CEO of Bayfront Medical Center (1987-95). During that same period, he also served his first stint on the NCCJ board, playing a part in the hiring of Roy Kaplan. Today he runs Albright and Associates, a St. Petersburg-based health care consulting firm.

“I’ve known Roy for a long time,” Albright says. “He is totally dedicated to a number of things. He is the type of person who, whatever he does, does tenaciously. He works hard toward the goal and he becomes a part of it. We have been fortunate to have him for 15 years because he’s totally dedicated to the mission of combating racism, bigotry and bias. And he has a very effective style that brings people along to dialogue and improve relationships. It’s a hard job.”

Recognition of Kaplan’s work is hardly limited to his own board, however.

The University of Tampa Center for Ethics gave one-time UT professor Kaplan its annual “Tampa Bay Ethics Award” in September 2004. In December 1998, he was one of 10 individuals nationwide recognized by the U.S. Department of Education with its “Education Heroes Award.” He has also appeared on “Today,” “Good Morning America,” “CBS Evening News,” “NBC Nightly News” and “Prime Time Live.”
• • •
So Roy Kaplan certainly sounds like a helluva guy, you’re saying to yourself. But what do he and the NCCJ have to do with business?

Everything, according to Crystal Coovert, vice president of community and public relations for JPMorgan Chase – the second-largest private sector employer in Hillsborough County.

The NCCJ puts on diversity programs for JPMorgan Chase – and several other bay area companies – focusing on multicultural initiatives in the workplace and community. These include JPMorgan Chase’s many internal networking groups including a gay, lesbian and trans-gendered group, an Asian group, an African-American group, working parents and a women’s interactive group.

JPMorgan Chase most recently brought NCCJ in for “diversity dialogues,” open forums on community issues such as diversity in the public school system. Employees use NCCJ as a vehicle for talking in groups about how they’re impacted by diversity not only at work but also in their private lives. Kaplan has also played a part in easing fears about JPMorgan Chase’s impending merger with Bank One.

It’s an ongoing relationship.

“We feel their organization has brought something into our organization that we didn’t have internally,” Coovert says. “We view it as another employee benefit.”

The JPMorgan Chase Foundation gives NCCJ a $10,000 annual grant and the company is a major sponsor of NCCJ’s annual “Walk As One” event with the City of Tampa.

In addition to providing corporate diversity training, NCCJ also sets up corporate diversity councils and helps businesses deal with conflict in the workplace. Other companies that have tapped it for guidance include Raymond James, Capital One, Verizon and St. Paul Insurance Co.

“We approach diversity in the business world as an ongoing education process,” Kaplan says. “We believe that there has to be commitment on the part of management to create opportunities for workers to interact and practice cultural sensitivity on a daily basis. We’re not in favor of coming in and doing a day of training and leaving. There’s no such thing as a vaccination against prejudice. It’s got to be part of a constant reinforcement of values.”

In schools, intolerance finds expression in the guise of fights and suspensions, Kaplan says. “In the workplace, you lose productivity and work days.”
• • •
By the time you read this, Roy Kaplan will have retired from NCCJ. But not to coach youth soccer, attend Star Trek conventions or listen to the Three Tenors, which are all interests of his.

No, he’s finally returning to his first love: education. And this time, instead of scratching and clawing his way in as a struggling 40-something associate professor, he’s re-entering academia as a prize catch for the University of South Florida. Kaplan was enticed to join the school’s Africana Studies Department as coordinator and developer of an ambitious interdisciplinary doctoral program on Diasporas and inequalities in health care. (Kaplan was previously an adjunct professor at USF, teaching courses on racism in America.)

Why retire now when he is clearly nearing the top of the mountain?

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Kaplan says. “I turned 60 in March. I’m a grandpa now. I just published a new book (Failing Grades: How Schools Breed Frustration, Anger, And Violence, and How to Prevent It, Scarecrow Education), which is my journal of our work in the schools for the last 15 years. The opportunity presented itself to do more intellectual things at USF. Besides, it’s just time to move on, to move in different directions.”

Time is catching up with Kaplan; he can’t outrun it and he can’t outtalk it no matter how hard he tries. Everywhere he turns, it seems, Kaplan – who has two sons and a granddaughter – is reminded of how precious time is.

“This job is seven days a week and many nights. It will take as much energy as you want to put into it. Now, I enjoy the work or I wouldn’t be here. But I bought a boat two months ago and I’ve yet to use it!”

Labels: American Minorities and Economic Opportunity, Anytown, Crystal Coovert, Failing Grades, H. Roy Kaplan, Interfaith Leaders Roundtable, Jim Albright, Jim Barrens, Juvenile Welfare Board, Leslie Stein, National Conference for Community and Justice, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Teddy Pierre, The Center for Catholic/Jewish Studies, University of South Florida

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