Rob Ruwitch, B.B.A. ’87, can trace his connection to the University of Miami through a father who helped build South Florida’s television industry and a mother who helped build its art world. Now he and his wife, Emily, are extending that legacy into Hurricane athletics.
The Ruwitches have committed $1 million to establish the Ruwitch Family Olympic Sports Endowed Centennial Scholarship, which will provide annual scholarships for undergraduate student-athletes competing in one of Miami’s eight Olympic sports programs.
For Rob Ruwitch, the gift adds a new dimension to a family history of generosity. His father, Lee Ruwitch, was a media pioneer who helped launch WTVJ, South Florida’s first television station, and was deeply involved at the University through the School of Law and the Miami Herbert Business School, including helping start the University’s original business plan competition.
His mother, Francien Ruwitch, was an art patron whose gifts helped endow the Lowe Art Museum and, later, Florida International University’s Frost Art Museum. In 1997, she and Lee Ruwitch founded the Francien and Lee Ruwitch Educational Endowment Fund at the Lowe, which still funds K-12 art programs, teachers, and school buses for student field trips.
“My parents were so involved in education and fine arts philanthropy,” Rob Ruwitch said. When it came to his own philanthropy, he saw an opportunity through athletics to make a meaningful contribution to the University and the students it serves, while carrying forward the values his family always embraced.
What resonated most were Olympic sports athletes who, he said, train as hard as any athlete on campus but rarely see the sponsorship dollars or recognition that follow football, basketball, and baseball.
Rob Ruwitch pointed to track star Allyson Felix, one of the most decorated athletes in Olympic history, whose corporate sponsor moved to cut her endorsement by 70 percent after she became pregnant. If a multiple gold medalist can lose her sponsorship, he reasoned, what chance does a walk-on swimmer or tennis player have of finding support on their own?
“These are athletes who really need it, and they’re really special kids,” Rob Ruwitch said. “They’re not nearly as recognized as the bigger sports, but their work and their accomplishment is no less impressive, important, or compelling.”
Structuring the gift as an endowment mattered just as much as the cause. He and Emily Ruwitch talked through the appeal of a gift that compounds and grows rather than one that simply gets spent.
“There’s something to be said for giving money that goes right out the door,” he said. “But there’s also more to be said for growing something for the future. You have to start someplace.”
Rob Ruwitch spent his career building that kind of patience into a business, too. In 1997, the same year his parents founded their endowment at the Lowe, he started a plastics manufacturing company with a partner, beginning with industrial trash bags before developing a composite decking product with no wood in it.
The business found unexpected momentum during the pandemic, as homeowners began undertaking more home improvement projects. He sold the company three-and-a-half years ago, decades after starting it as the last venture he and his father worked on together before Lee Ruwitch passed away in 1999.
Giving back runs through the Ruwitch family. Emily Ruwitch is involved in every philanthropic decision the family makes, as is their son, Zach, who is pursuing a master’s degree in documentary film at the School of Communication. Rob Ruwitch said exposing his son to giving early, like his parents had done with him, matters more in an era of social media and instant gratification.
“It’s not an Instagram post,” he said. “It’s something that’s going to continue for the betterment of society.”
Zach Ruwitch recently had a documentary screened at the Raindance Film Festival in London, and the family traveled to see it. Rob Ruwitch said watching his son find his own distinct path only reinforced what he hopes other alumni take from his family’s story: that there is no single correct route to staying connected to the University or to giving back to it.
“Pick whatever program you were either involved in or interested in and pursue something there,” he said. “You can start small in something that’s of interest to you.”
It is, in some ways, the same instinct that shaped his parents’ giving, carried into a different corner of campus. “I would like to hope that they would be pretty proud of what we’ve accomplished,” Rob Ruwitch said.
