Avi Smith-Rapaport

We Care Computers

Avi is among many other things an entrepreneur, having founded We Care Computers almost 20 years ago and grown it from a nights-and-weekends experiment into a thriving full service tech company with a great reputation and long list of impressed clients throughout the state and beyond. That’s reason enough to be proud, and he is, but Avi’s real mission is far more ambitious: Healing the world.

Yes, you read that right. He is just one man but he’s an extremely busy one with a fervent belief in the power of positivity. Avi has traveled to the Dominican Republic to help build concrete homes for sugar-cane workers who’d been living in corrugated metal shacks. He launched a program during the pandemic that put refurbished laptops into the hands of needy students. He wears pink with pride and has helped raise tens of thousands of dollars through fundraisers for the American Cancer Society. He’s irrepressibly upbeat, on the outside anyway, and truly believes that a world that’s scarred and scary in so many ways can, in fact, be repaired. “I think I just need to convince more people of it.”

Avi credits his optimism and philanthropic orientation to his mother and father, who were community minded and selfless, always involved in “Tzedakah”, a Hebrew word that’s come to refer to charity work. He attended Ezra Academy, a Jewish day school in Woodbridge and then Amity High School (class of ‘94) but also learned a lot during summers at Camp Young Judaea in Amherst, N.H. Next stop was UConn – where he met Erica, his now-wife and herself the owner of a local small business – after which came IT jobs that taught him a lot and also convinced him he could make it on his own.

“Being proactive is critical,” says Avi, referring not just to how the WCC team works to support clients but also how he approaches the business development side. One of his first decisions was to join the West Hartford Chamber of Commerce and he’s never really stopped networking. From sponsoring local baseball teams to serving on professional and civic boards and groups to chatting with podcasters to supporting important causes (Foodshare Hartford and the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure to name just two), Avi and his company are, as they say, ‘all in.’

Avi is an athlete (an outstanding baseball player as a kid, he’s now into triathlons and such and has done four-and-counting Ironman events). He loves spending time with family (including taking hikes with Erica and their dog Bradyy) and is beyond proud of sons Maxx and Samm (both in college) for so much especially the communities they’ve instinctively created “and how empathetic they are for the world.” With his beard, his rugged good looks and his appetite for life (and good food!), Avi's like the actor in those Dos Equis commercials – you know, ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World.” All of which brings us back to the world … and Avi’s desire to heal it.

The Chinese proverb says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and Avi can relate. Ironman events start with a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride and then a 26.2 mile run. Brutal. So he trains hard and on race day takes it one step, one stage at a time. Same as building a business. Get a client. Do a great job. Let the word spread. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s in Avi’s nature and always has been. “When I was growing up my folks used to say to me, ‘If you save one life, it’s as if you save the world.’” So he does what he can and he encourages others to do the same, or at least to do what they can do. “You don’t have to be a cancer doctor,” he says. You can make a donation. Plant a garden. Say hello. “I see so many people who are healers in their own right,” he says. “I love connecting with them and seeing what grows from it. It makes me feel good and I know it makes a difference.”