Early Life and Career
Kraft was raised in an observant Jewish family. His father was a dressmaker in Boston's Chinatown and discouraged him from playing sports. Kraft attended Brookline High School in his hometown, graduating in 1959. He is a 1963 graduate of Columbia University, which he attended on scholarship, and received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1965. While at Columbia, Kraft played on the school's lightweight football team.
He began his professional career with the Rand-Whitney Group, a Worcester-based packaging company owned by Hiatt. He still serves as this company's chairman. In 1972, he founded International Forest Products, a trader of physical paper commodities. The two combined companies make up the largest privately held paper and packaging companies in the United States. International Forest Products is consistently among the top 100 US exporters/importers and in 2005 was No. 45 on the Journal of Commerce's list in that category.
In 1986, Kraft helped a minority business group acquire WNEV-TV, a CBS affiliate in Boston (now NBC affiliate WHDH-TV). He continued his investment in the entertainment field by buying several Boston radio stations. He is a member of a private equity group, which funded film, theatre, and television producer Scott Sanders' company, "Scott Sanders Productions."
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