Jake Mascotte retired as president and chief executive officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, Inc. on 30 June 2001. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of the Continental Corporation, an insurance-holding company, which he headed from 1982 until it merged in 1995 with CNA. After graduating from the University of Virginia Law School in 1964, he began his career as law clerk to Howard A. Dawson, Jr., former chief judge of the United States Tax Court, and then joined the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand as a tax specialist before becoming executive vice president of People's Trust Bank in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1967.

Mascotte began his insurance career in 1969 with the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company and was responsible for the western home office of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company in Kansas City from 1974 until he became the president of Continental Corp. in 1981. He is an attorney, a certified public accountant, and a chartered life underwriter.

Mascotte serves on the board of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. and is a retired director of Hallmark Cards Inc. He is currently chairman of the board of Common Cents, a nonprofit corporation fostering the civic and ethical development of school children by enabling them to participate in grassroots philanthropy, and is also vice chairman of the Aspen Community Foundation. He serves as a member of the Energy Investment Leadership Forum, a group assisting E+Co., America's leading public purpose investment company, which finances clean energy entrepreneurs in developing countries. He is a retired member of the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute and a member of its Council of Honorary Trustees. Mascotte is the former national chairman of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the nation's largest nonprofit developer of low-income housing. He is a former board member of the Hall Family Foundation and the Taub Institute for Research into Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University in New York. He is a former trustee of the New York Public Library and Lincoln Center. He recently completed his role as co-chairman of Kansas City’s Jazz District Redevelopment Corporation and his successful efforts on this project, together with those of former Kansas City mayor Emanuel Cleaver, were recognized by the Washington DC–based Partners for Livable Communities with their first Bridge Builders Award honoring civic leaders from five American cities for their commitment to reach across the gulf of race, religion, and economic status to build better communities.

Mascotte was also a participant in the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a diverse group of community leaders who worked for three years on efforts to increase civic revitalization and improve the infrastructure of our national civic life. This group was supported by a consortium of foundations under the auspices of Professor Robert Putnam at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University and has produced an agenda of innovative, practicable proposals and strategies for increasing Americans’ connections with each other, published under the name Better Together.

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This page updated 20 March 2007

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