2014 Booth Alumni Award Winners: Distinguished Corporate Award
Since 1972, the Chicago Booth School of Business Distinguished Alumni Awards have honored outstanding alumni achievements, and those who embody the school’s dedication to limitless inquiry and courageous leadership.
This week we’ll look at the winners of the 2014 Corporate Award, Entrepreneurial Award, Public Service Award, and Young Alumni Award that given out to four alumni who have made an impact across the business world. First up, the Distinguished Corporate Award.
Distinguished Corporate Award
George Conrades, ’71 (XP-28), has been a key player for various successful tech firms over the past 40 years. He spent 30 years at IBM, where he ran the company’s US and Asia/Pacific operations and founded the firm’s first headquarters in Japan.
After IMB, Conrades joined technology and research firm BBN Corp. as CEO and president. During his time at BBN, the firm developed ARPANET, the predecessor of today’s internet, and became one of the leading internet service providers with a focus on business-to-business applications.When BBN was acquired by GTE in 1997, the firm’s stock had more than doubled to $29 a share from when Conrades joined the company three years earlier.
Conrades joined tech start-up Akamai Technologies Inc in 1999, and in his first six months as CEO and chairman, Conrades led the cloud platform provider’s successful IPO, which created a market capitalization of 30 billion. Today Akamai has annual revenues of $1.37 billion, runs 137,000 servers in 87 countries, and is considered the leader in content and application delivery.
Conrades shared his enthusiasm for the high-speed tech world in a 2005 interview with the Harvard Business Review: “For me, the pace of Akamai—and of the internet business in general—is exhilarating. I’m having the time of my life.”
Tomorrow, we’ll check out the winner of the Distinguished Entrepreneurial Award .
