The Corvette came back twice. Richard H. Collins had helped finance it through one of his banks. When the borrower stopped making payments, the bank repossessed the car. Then came an appeal, some overdue money, and a second chance. The next time the bank recovered the Corvette, it had been wrecked. Collins remembers the eventual loss as three times the original one. A sports car had delivered an expensive lesson in arithmetic.
He tells that story without much varnish. The banker had been persuaded; the decision had cost him. In his account, the useful thing was to recognize a loss before generosity or wishful thinking made it larger. There is a dry practicality to the anecdote, especially coming from someone who would spend decades backing a business devoted to giving children another chance.
Collins, the Dallas investor known as Dick, co-founded Istation in 1998 and became its chairman and CEO in 2007. His interests spread well beyond educational software: banks, property, oil and gas, radio, newspapers, historic buildings. Yet education kept claiming his attention. Following Istation’s 2024 merger with Amira Learning, he became co-chairman of the combined company’s board. The job title changed. The reading lessons continued.
The banker who had to sell reading
Collins graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1969 with a business administration degree, having also attended Trinity University. Commercial banking came early. He chaired two banks and went on to develop and acquire ranch, residential, and commercial property. Energy investments added another set of risks. From 1978, his media interests included movie theaters, radio stations, and newspapers. This was a business education conducted across several very different balance sheets.
He established Richard H. Collins Enterprises in 1985. Investing across industries gave him a broad professional life before Istation acquired its place in it. Reading software would ask something particular of that experience: an investor’s willingness to wait, followed by an operator’s willingness to take responsibility for what happened next.
When Collins took the CEO job in 2007, Istation had about 30 employees. By 2015, the team numbered almost 200. During the economic downturn, as school budgets tightened, he went on the road selling the program himself. The chairman had a product to demonstrate and school officials to persuade. A title could open a conversation. It could hardly finish the sale.
The company expanded beyond its original reading program into math, writing, and Spanish-language learning. In 2015, Collins became a Southwest Region finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Four years later, EdTech Breakthrough named him EdTech CEO of the Year. These were recognitions of an operating career, following years when the less ceremonial task was keeping a school’s attention.
A classroom has its own due diligence
Istation brought together Collins, Robert Rubin, and Bill Lowrey. The problem they addressed was specific: teachers needed timely information about reading skills, alongside instruction students could use. Animation and game-like interactions gave the work a form children might want to return to. Assessment gave teachers information for the next lesson. The company’s full name, Imagination Station, suited the combination.
Development took time. The company began in 1998; its first major sale, to Terrell Independent School District in Texas, came in 2002. A digital reading screener followed in 2005, then a computer-adaptive assessment in 2008. Those dates put some useful space into the founding story. The product did not arrive fully formed in a burst of entrepreneurial conviction.
Collins also pressed for software that could run in schools with older computers and limited connectivity. It was a consequential constraint. A classroom’s equipment could determine whether a child encountered the program at all. The practical work included supporting teachers, providing usable reports, and fitting technology into places where the budget would never resemble a software company’s demonstration room.
People inside the company changed how the work got done. Ossa Fisher learned about Istation through Collins and joined as chief marketing officer in 2015. She later moved into product development, helping introduce smaller, faster software releases organized around teams. The company’s growth involved colleagues revising its methods as well as an investor continuing to back its purpose.
In August 2012, Istation received a Texas Education Agency contract under Texas SUCCESS. It offered free, unlimited access to Istation Reading for Texas public-school students in grades three through eight, both at school and at home. For an entrepreneur whose educational interests began close to home, a statewide agreement gave those interests a much larger field of work.
Collins’s view of the teacher’s role comes through in the company’s red-caped child logo. Accepting his 2019 award, he called teachers “the wind beneath their capes.” The image is cheerful, but the relationship is concrete. Software supplied activities and reports. Teachers still had students to understand and decisions to make.
The family business was also public life
Collins grew up in a family where commercial ventures and civic institutions were familiar territory. His grandfather, Carr P. Collins, organized Fidelity Union Life Insurance Company in 1927 and became a longtime Baylor University trustee. His father worked in banking, insurance, and oil. His uncle James Mitchell Collins served in Congress from 1968 to 1983. Business and public service were already intertwined in the family history.
His mother, Calvert Keoun Collins, supplied a particularly direct example. In 1957, she became the first woman elected to Dallas City Council. Collins has described her willingness to stand her ground as an enduring influence. The family connection to education was personal, too: his grandfather’s university service belonged to a longer pattern of involvement with schools and learning.
His own philanthropy took several forms. He founded the Children’s Education Fund to help Dallas children attend schools chosen by their parents. The Today Foundation supported educational initiatives, including the Texas Leadership Forum, which introduced high-school students to government, civic engagement, and the free-market economy. The Collins Academy pursued science, technology, and history education in Texas and neighboring states.
At SMU, the connection extended beyond an alumni photograph. In 2015, the university announced his $1 million commitment to establish the Institute for Leadership Impact in its Simmons School. Its purpose was to prepare leaders in public and private education. A person who had spent years choosing investments was helping create an institution concerned with the people making decisions inside schools.
There were less formal settings as well. In August 2019, Collins and Charles Haley joined Dallas Cowboys participants, volunteers, and Istation staff for a Tackle Tomorrow golf fundraiser supporting children’s education. The following month, the Today Foundation and Tackle Tomorrow received Community Hero recognition at an SMU football game. On the field, an education partnership briefly acquired a scoreboard-sized setting.
A second classroom beside the bayou
Collins’s attention to Jefferson, in East Texas, gives his career another setting. He acquired the House of the Seasons in 1973. Built in 1872, the house became part of the family foundation’s preservation work. The project connected an old building with the possibility of teaching people about local culture, conservation, archaeology, and the reasons a community might keep its past standing.
He served on the Texas Historical Commission from 1981 to 1989. Jefferson and nearby Marshall also held a family connection: his mother had grown up in that part of Texas. His preservation interests therefore had both an institutional form and a personal geography. The places receiving his attention were attached to the family story.
The Port Jefferson History and Nature Park extends that work along Big Cypress Bayou. Its 40 acres bring together waterfront history, habitat restoration, and outdoor learning. The Collins Academy worked with the city on the project. Trails and the historic railroad bridge place the lesson in the landscape. A child can learn something there without logging in.
History, habitat, and outdoor education at Port Jefferson History and Nature Park in Jefferson, Texas.
Collins’s current plans include adding waterfront sculpture related to the area’s history and environment. The idea fits a career in which educational work repeatedly takes a physical form: a school, a computer, an old home, a trail. His investments in learning have occupied more than one kind of classroom.
A new title, a familiar question
The next corporate chapter was announced on June 11, 2024. Amira Learning merged with Istation, joining its AI reading assistant with Istation’s content and school relationships. Amira became the continuing business. Mark Angel became CEO, while Collins and Owl Ventures’ Amit Patel became board co-chairmen. Other leaders came from both companies, including Istation’s finance and revenue teams.
The personal route into that transaction included a meeting. Rich Watson, Istation’s revenue executive, described introducing Collins to Patel at the ASU+GSV Summit in April 2023. A little over a year later came the announcement. Behind the language of a merger sat the ordinary business mechanism of one person introducing two others.
Outside those boardroom connections, Collins writes about showing up for his daughters, Calvert and Genevieve: attending performances and sporting events, offering support, and allowing them to solve their own problems. He also enjoys history, including reflecting on Rome’s rise and fall. The interests suit someone whose career has required both taking a long view and living with the consequences of particular decisions.
“Life is a marathon. Keep running.”
Richard H. Collins
He returns to that line in his personal writing. By then, the reader has met the banker with the wrecked Corvette, the executive selling reading software, the father in the audience, and the preservationist in Jefferson. Staying has taken different forms. Sometimes it meant continuing to fund an idea. Sometimes it meant maintaining a building, backing an institution, or simply being there when someone looked up.