Corporation for Public Broadcasting President and CEO Patricia Harrison Honored with Medallion Award from PBS SoCaL

For Immediate Release on April 29, 2013

Harrison recognized for her leadership in strengthening public media’s commitment to education and lifelong learning through American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen

Washington, D.C. – The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) today announced that President and CEO, Patricia Harrison, was honored with the 2013 Medallion Award at PBS SoCaL’s “A Lifetime of Learning” Annual Gala on Saturday, April 27. The PBS SoCaL Medallion award recognizes public media leaders committed to advancing education and encouraging lifelong learning.

Ms. Harrison was recognized for strengthening public media’s capacity to support all children, particularly those from at-risk and low-income communities, by expanding CPB’s investment in early childhood education to help students transition to middle and high school and beyond.

Under Ms. Harrison’s leadership, CPB launched American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, a nationwide initiative to help communities identify and implement solutions to the high school dropout crisis. Currently, more than 75 public media stations, including PBS SoCaL, across 33 states are working with over 800 partners and 200 at-risk schools as part of American Graduate to help keep students on a path to high school graduation.

“Education has always been a core value of public media and it remains so today,” said Ms. Harrison. “Public television and radio stations – locally owned and operated – are deeply invested in serving their communities with programming, content, and engagement that provides every citizen with a safe place to learn and gives students, no matter their background, an equal opportunity to succeed in school and in life. On behalf of everyone at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and those individuals at PBS SoCaL and across the country who dedicate so much of their lives to public media, thank you for this award.”

As part of the 2013 Medallion Award program, PBS SoCaL surprised Ms. Harrison with a video tribute comprising congratulatory remarks from General Colin Powell, Ken Burns, Lidia Bastianich, Mary Wilson, Doris Roberts, Jim Lehrer, Judy Woodruff, Paula Kerger, Hari Sreenivasan, and Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

About CPB

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government's investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operations of more than 1,400 locally-owned and -operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.

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