Holocaust Council to honor Ken Boutwell with Humanitarian Award
Ken Boutwell didn’t expect to end up being the Holocaust Education Resource Council 2023 Humanitarian Award nominee in his early years on his family’s dairy farm in Mississippi.
Boutwell planned to stay in the family business, but he changed his major from dairy husbandry to agricultural economics once he and Jean, his wife-to-be, decided to make a life together. Throughout the decades to come, the work ethic born on the dairy farm would stay strong.
Boutwell worked in the Defense Secretary’s office at the Pentagon at the start of his career.
After his military service, he taught at the University of Florida, where he then became the university’s budgeting director. From there, he moved to Tallahassee to become the Florida State University System’s vice chancellor for administration.
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Boutwell, who loves to start new things, built MGT of America after serving Florida’s State University System. The firm, which specializes in educational and government consulting, grew into a leading national concern.
Boutwell now is a co-managing member with his son, Jeff, of Vineyard Capital Partners, a private equity group that owns businesses and properties in nineteen states.
Boutwell relishes doing things with others rather than taking them on solo. That was the case with Capital Health Plan, a Tallahassee health maintenance organization that serves around 135,000 members, that he founded with friends in 1978 and that he still serves as board chair.
The ability to meld business acumen with empathy has been a defining characteristic of Boutwell – that ability has led to countless people being helped and our community being better in so many ways, including Big Bend United Way and the Refugee Connection.
Boutwell got involved with HERC through Jean, who went to a lunch and learn at Temple Israel and came away saying the multi-denominational event had been one of the best things she had ever done.
“I’m really concerned,” says Boutwell. “In 2013, just 10 years ago, the number of antisemitic acts in the country was about two per day. Last year it was an average of 10 per day. Five times as many. In just 10 years.
“What would have happened in Germany in the 1920s if there had been a group like HERC speaking out against antisemitism? In the 1920s you could have done that and gotten away with it. By 1936, you could have been executed if you spoke out.
“We need to speak out now while we can, so that we don’t ever get into that situation. That’s what motivates me,” says Boutwell.
You’ve got to think in terms of a business approach to charity. You can have a benevolent heart, but you’ve got to have the business element too, Boutwell believes.
Boutwell lives out the idea that inaction is not an option and that work ethics are a core part of life, as is having good role models.
Boutwell talks openly about the biases he had to overcome personally on his life’s path. As a child, his community was segregated; his church did not welcome Black people. He saw example after example of racism in his own community.
When he left Mississippi to go to graduate school, things started to change, and he has continued to fight injustice ever since.
Simply by being at the HERC dinner, people are standing up against antisemitism, says Boutwell. “I hope we get lots of people that come and participate in and support HERC. We need to triple the size of HERC so we can serve a lot more schools, says Boutwell, who says he didn’t learn anything in depth about the Holocaust until he was an adult. And adulthood, says Boutwell, “could be too late for some people.”
Boutwell’s second book, “Let Justice and Mercy Flow,” is subtitled “A call to love and support each other in cruel cultures and evil societies.”
“How can this be?” he asks in his book about the evils of the world.
We may grow up in cultures that destroy individuals, communities and entire countries, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take it upon ourselves to ask questions and to change. Ken Boutwell is leading the way as an example.
If you go
What: Holocaust Education Resource Council Annual Remembrance Dinner
When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 24
Where: Dunlap Champions Club, Florida State University, 403 Stadium Drive
Cost: $150 per person; visit holocaustresources.org or call 850-443-9649
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Holocaust Council to honor Ken Boutwell with Humanitarian Award
