GLOBAL – MAY 19, 2011 – The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity presents the 2011 Media Person of the Year Award to Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who has helped grow the company from a Silicon Valley start-up to a global leader in technology in the last decade.
The honor is bestowed upon an influential figure in the development of today’s media landscape, ultimately playing an integral part in shaping the future of the creative communications industry.
“This award reflects the hard work of many people at Google working to develop new technologies to help advertisers thrive in the digital world,” says Schmidt.
As Google CEO from 2001 to 2011, he oversaw the company’s technical and business strategy alongside founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a strong culture of innovation.
Prior to joining Google, he was the Chairman and CEO of Novell and Chief Technology Officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Previously he served on the research staff at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Laboratories and Zilog. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University as well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
“Under Eric’s leadership, Google has truly changed the way people around the world access information on a daily basis,” comments Philip Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO. “He has helped build Google in an astonishingly short period of time into one of the world’s biggest advertising media and one of the world’s most valuable brands. We are delighted to honour Eric with this award.”
Cannes Lions delegates will have the opportunity to attend the Google seminar on Wednesday 22 June at which Eric will be speaking. Schmidt will be honored during the Press, Cyber and Design Lions awards ceremony that same evening.
Previous recipients of the Media Person of the Year Award include, Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation; Sir Anthony O’Reilly, CEO of Independent News & Media; Tsuneo Watanabe, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings; Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom and Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner.
Cannes Lions is the world’s largest celebration of creativity in communications and the most prestigious international annual advertising and communications awards. To register to attend, please visit www.canneslions.com.
