RINALDO BRUTOCO: ENTREPRENEUR FOR THE COMMON GOOD

Rinaldo Brutoco went to law school at the University of California Los Angeles. As a young law student, he founded the first non-profit public interest law firm in California, the California Public Interest Law Center opened its doors in 1970. One early class action case he took on pro bono required years of litigation and became the largest class action victory in the United States as of 1972 when he won, at the age of 25, after a special session of the California Supreme Court with oral arguments that lasted three hours.

Despite this success, Brutoco decided that he could do better for society than litigation (“Throwing sand in someone else’s gears is never as effective as building a ‘machine’ that was designed to do good from the start.”). He decided he would enter the commercial world of business to begin building those ‘machines’ (businesses) he believed would serve society.

Since then, for forty years, as an entrepreneur and executive, Brutoco has focused his time, energy, and talents on the best ways for business to serve the common good. He sees business as the most important and most powerful institution on the planet. He wants to use business to solve humanity's largest challenges.

Dorason Corporation is and has been the main channel for his activities since 1981. However, Brutoco has been involved with multiple other businesses before and since.

With two partners, he launched the world’s first pay television company that sold current release motion pictures on cable networks for a fee. He was a founding partner with Izzy Asper of of Canwest Capital which developed a $3 billion asset base between 1978 and 1981 and built the first privately owned television network that spanned the United States and Canada. With his partner George Zimmer, he took Men’s Wearhouse public and over 25 years built a $3.2 billion company. When he left active management, the company generated $300 million in annual positive cash flow.

His activities have touched many parts of the global society. Early in his career, he became a close advisor to Mother Theresa, and he was selected by her to be solely responsible for distributing the story of her life as she wanted to have the story told. He continued to serve Mother Teresa for the last full decade of her life, and upon her death immediately donated all of his rights as exclusive distributor to the Missionary Sisters of Charity. Brutoco was also one of 4 co-founders, with Mikhail Gorbachev, of the Gorbachev Foundation. 

In 1986, Brutoco founded the World Business Academy as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank focused on the role business can and should play in solving humanity’s largest challenges.

Through the World Business Academy he was also one of the three co-founders, along with Deepak Chopra and successful fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, of Just Capital which is an independent nonprofit dedicated to building an economy that works for all Americans by measuring and improving corporate stakeholder performance at America’s largest public companies. 

Brutoco has served on numerous non-profit and for-profit boards.