The Houston Chronicle reports
Benny Agosto remembers when he was a child and his Puerto Rican father would come home and tell stories of struggle at the jewelry shop where he worked as a helper. His father said people would put him down because he didn’t speak English well or have an education.
Agosto, who was born in New York and raised in Puerto Rico, said those stories from his father, a World War II veteran with a sixth-grade education, would be repeated over and over: Benny should get a higher education and “the doors will open” for him, his father said.
He came to Houston and did just that. Agosto earned a master’s degree in microbiology and was a teacher for six years before changing careers and graduating from the South Texas College of Law in 1995.
Now he is the managing partner with personal injury law firm Abraham Watkins Nichols Agosto Aziz and Stogner in Houston. He wants to change a pattern that marked a good part of his life journey. So he and his wife Nichole donated $3 million to his alma mater, the South Texas College of Law Houston.
The gift will create a diversity center at the law school.
“Unfortunately, the legal profession does not reflect our society,” said Agosto of the lack of diversity in law education and the legal field.
“I’m not aware of any larger individual gifts to diversity, equity and inclusion at another law school” in the country, said South Texas College of Law President and Dean Michael F. Barry.
Barry said he is “grateful” to the couple for helping the law school fulfill its mission to “be the most intentionally and successfully diverse law school in the nation.”
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