October 03, 2025 | Michail Takach

Jim Rivett: Green Bay's guardian of social good

Dedicated to community service, social justice, and personal responsibility, Jim transformed his hometown with a legacy of giving back.

Jim Rivett

"The word 'no' was not in his vocabulary."

James (Jim) Rivett (1958-2018) was a man defined by a commitment to his community, a relentless pursuit of design for the greater good, and a dedication to fostering goodness in others. His life, a testament to authenticity and creative community building in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was cut short in 2018, but his legacy continues through the advertising firm he started, KHROME, and The Canary Fund.

Our Beacons of the Bay program is dedicated to Jim’s relentless spirit of giving back.

Jim Rivett was originally from Green Bay. Though he harbored a desire to live in a larger city to pursue filmmaking and fine art in a bigger arts community, he was deeply committed to his family and his community. Over time, he realized that "your creativity isn’t defined by your ZIP code" and dedicated himself to making Green Bay a place where creatives could "grow and thrive to their creative potential".

He met the person who would become his life partner, Pete, at a YMCA camp in northern Wisconsin in 1980. They became a couple in 1983 and were together for 35 years before Jim's death. Pete was originally from Janesville, Wisconsin, but has lived in Green Bay for over 40 years. Jim and Pete were legally married in 2016. They had waited until they could do so in their own hometown with their friends and neighbors, rather than traveling to another state.

Jim and his family

Jim and Pete's special day

Jim, from a Green Bay Press-Gazette feature story

Jim graduated from UW-Whitewater in 1980 with a focus on graphic design and a minor in filmmaking. His early career included working for smaller department stores, like Prange's, before moving to the largest and most respected ad firm in the state, Goltz and Associates, in Green Bay, where he and Bob Goltz became great friends.

The corporate advertising world, however, became a source of internal conflict for Jim. He struggled to live a meaningful life in an industry laser-focused on the bottom line, often seeing his most creative work tossed into the recycling bin. This struggle led him to take a ten-month sabbatical to Costa Rica in 1996 to "unplug and do something completely different".

In Costa Rica, Jim volunteered extensively. His work included assisting at a girls' shelter for survivors of sexual violence, helping with the resettlement of Nicaraguan refugees, and creating murals and doing other arts-related projects with children in primary schools.

He returned in 1997 with a change of heart. He joined a different firm, Arketype, where he worked until 2014, when he started his own firm, KHROME. His time in Costa Rica helped him realize that design could play a role in moving people forward with their vision of the world and that he could contribute to the community, society, and the greater good, as a designer.

Jim's next-level move was inspired by a goal: "How can I balance my work in the corporate world with the ability to give back (at least 20% of annual revenue) to the nonprofit world?” This was particularly important to him because he felt nonprofits often had untold stories to share and needed help telling them. This philosophy became the foundational mission of KHROME.

KHROME was founded in 2015 on the principle of not being bound by money or profit and embracing the luxuries of community engagement and social responsibility. The firm's commitment to community remains the same today: to benefit Wisconsin’s nonprofit organizations through in-kind work, volunteerism and financial donations.

Jim met his friend and current owner of KHROME, Shelly, in 2003. She noted that KHROME is a testament to Jim’s ability to find people who shared his beliefs and to foster the goodness in human beings. Today, the company has 12 employees, four of whom live in other parts of the U.S. and continue to work remotely because they are deeply impassioned by the mission and “infinitely” valuable to the KHROME team.

Jim's design work and community activism were often intertwined, resulting in numerous impactful projects.

A long-standing passion project of Jim and Pete (who was in the academic field while Jim was corporate) began in 2004. They conceived of a brilliant idea to promote messages of "living a life of peace and honoring diversity and understanding words and actions of Martin Luther King". Jim began designing posters, which were printed at Arketype’s expense and distributed to every third-grade classroom in six school districts in Northeast Wisconsin.

This initiative, which ran for 20 years, expanded into a broader mission. Teams from Arketype would go into schools with community members to perform a skit using the concept of “Respectacles”—special sunglasses for kids that, once worn, would let them see into someone’s heart. They also donated books to school libraries to advance the narratives of Dr. King.

This focus on peace and diversity led to a community-driven anti-bullying campaign. In 2011, after a young man who was bullied as a child approached Arketype, they created a video called "Ouch, Bullying Hurts," which was nominated for an Emmy Award. They made two versions—one for younger children and one for older students—pulling people from the community to speak about the pain of bullying and the damage of silence.

Jim, Shelly, and their team also produced a full-length feature documentary called "Westbound." The film was about a 97-year-old man who, after growing up in impoverished conditions during the Depression, created a hobo fantasy life and became obsessed with the itinerant art form known as tramp art. The man created the largest single collection of "hobo whimsy" in the U.S. The goal was to sell the collection to an art house so he could pass money on to his family, which ultimately happened when it was sold to the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan.

Jim managed the capital campaign committee for the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW), raising money for a new clinic in Green Bay. He was especially committed to the AIDS Walk, and he worked with figures like Clay Matthews, Ryan Braun, Tim Gunn, and Stephanie Klatt to create high-energy awareness. These efforts inresulted to record-breaking fundraising results year after year.

In fact, Jim still holds the American Red Cross record for individual fundraising in Green Bay.

Jim was a proud gay man who, while never hiding his identity, struggled with the social stigma of being gay in the 1970s and 80s. His ability to be fully visible evolved over time, especially being in his hometown where he felt a need to be accountable to his past relationships. He was cautious in a corporate world, especially when dealing with clients, where he felt you didn't lead with your personal life, gay or straight.

A powerful public declaration came late in his life. In 10214, Jim was given an "Ethics in Business” Award.” This was the first time Jim publicly acknowledged his relationship in front of corporate America. Jim believed that if he could save others from the pain he felt earlier in life—pain he couldn't speak about —he would be living the life he was born to live.

He was involved in LGBTQ causes, including the social group Positive Voice in the late 90s, which aimed to increase community visibility through constructive action. Arketype also did the advertising and design work for Green Bay's first "official" public Pride event in 2008.

Jim's impact often came through personal mentorship. He fostered a highly talented 18-year-old who needed someone to talk to about his identity, and he mentored a client for years on how to delicately support her son through his transition. Even after his death, the fact that Jim—a gay married man—was buried and eulogized in a Catholic Church by multiple Norbertine priests, with an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 people waiting in the rain to say goodbye, speaks volumes about the respect he commanded as a human being.

A few months after Jim's death, a group of grieving friends and colleagues met to determine how to honor him. They decided that whatever they did should be about the arts, diversity, and respect. Because Jim cared about so many issues, they opted to provide seed grants to people who wanted to do good things for the community—people "like Jim.”

In a friend’s eulogy, Jim was likened to a "canary in the coal mine," being "extra sensitive to his environment" and able to identify needs in others that were often overlooked. This analogy, combined with the idea of planting "seeds of goodness through giving," is how The Canary Fund began.

The Fund was started with money raised from a kickoff concert at the Meyer Theater (a place Jim helped renovate.) In 2019, the first grants were distributed and since then, over $190,000 has been awarded to 80 individuals and emerging nonprofits. The Canary Fund acts as an incubator, investing in the community by supporting people with initial funds, which they can then leverage to get other grants and continue their work.

The Fund supports individuals based on their approach, not just the project's topic, as long as it aligns with the Fund's "ten pillars of support". These projects include several by high school students and adults that focus on mental health and wellness, youth development, innovative programs for seniors and the elderly, support for arts and culture, and projects dealing with animal welfare and the support of LGBTQ+ communities.

"The word 'no' was not in this man’s vocabulary," said Shawn Kiser, executive producer of "Dancing with Our Stars," the fundraising campaign for American Red Cross Northeast Wisconsin Chapter. "If you were a nonprofit, he was going to donate those services. He really, really enjoyed doing that."

“Jim was a guardian of the worthwhile,” said Pete Angilello. “He would be smiling at the continuing love and compassion that his life inspired.”

Jim Rivett

Jim Rivett

Artist rendering of Jim Rivett

Jim Rivett's life was a profound example of finding purpose, not in escaping one's origins, but in actively enriching them.

He overcame a feeling of having to apologize for being from Green Bay to becoming intensely proud of a community that he helped transform into a more creative, compassionate, and diverse place.

Pete and Jim

The Canary Fund