Bruce Richard Katz (February 17, 1947 – June 26, 2022) was an American entrepreneur who co-founded The Rockport Shoe Company in 1971 and served as its CEO until its sale to Reebok International in 1986.

After college and extensive travel around the United States, the younger Katz spent several years preparing to pursue his dream of sailing around the world.

After a year, father and son decided to develop their own unique brand of shoes engineered for comfort, which they called Rockport,[1] and their business began to grow.

[11] Following the sale of Rockport to Reebok International, Bruce Katz moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1987, where he involved himself with early online communities, which were then merely individual "Bulletin Boards" into which users would dial on phone lines through modems.

Well Engaged has served Washingtonpost.com, Fox Entertainment, Ziff-Davis Media, E-Trade, Tribune Interactive, About.com, Business Week, Major League Baseball, and other leading Internet news and commerce sites.

Katz's interest led him to a trade show in Las Vegas, where he encountered Werner Wyrsch,[20] a former product development executive at Rockport.

[23] To Katz, the state of the shoe industry offered limitless opportunity: "I saw that the men’s business had been decimated by ... the overwhelming success of Nike and others.

Katz delivered comfort by insisting on using high-quality materials, offering a wide range of sizes and widths, and focusing on details.

In 1994 the Foundation provided early seed capital for the creation of Business for Social Responsibility, a global nonprofit organization that works with its network of more than 250 member companies to build a just and sustainable world.