The son of Samuel Bronfman. Bronfman spent the 1950s and 1960s working with his father, Samuel, at Seagram Ltd., the family's beverage business. He became chairman of the company in 1971, the year of his father's death. As the longtime president of the World Jewish Congress, Bronfman fought for Jewish rights worldwide and led the successful fight to secure more than a billion dol- lars in restitution from Swiss banks for Holocaust victims and their heirs. As a philan- thropist, Bronfman took the lead in creating and funding many efforts to strengthen Jewish identity among young people. He founded the Bronfman Youth Fellowship in 1987, a young leadership program that brings together Jewish high school students from Israel and North America. In the 1990s he worked to revive Hillel, serving as the founding chair of the campus organization's board of governors. In 2002, he provided the funding to launch MyJewishLearning, a digital media entity that now also includes the Jewish parenting site Keller and boasts 1million visitors per month. In 1981, Bronfman became the president of the World Jewish Congress, step- ping up the organization's activism on behalf ofJewish communities around the world. From his perch at the WIC, in addition to battling with the Swiss banks, he continued the fight for Soviet Jewry, took the lead in exposing the Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim and worked to improve Jewish relations with the Vatican.