| Bill Baker | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | September 20, 1942 Cleveland, Ohio |
William Franklin Baker (born September 20, 1942) is an American television executive. He is Executive in Residence at Columbia University School of Business, Journalist in Residence at Fordham University and the Claudio Aquaviva Chair at the Graduate School of Education, and President Emeritus of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, parent company of WNET-TV (Channel Thirteen) and WLIW-TV (Channel 21), where he served for 20 years as Chief Executive Officer. He has been called an icon of public television for producing some of the industry’s most respected and popular programs, including Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers Journal, Nature, Cyberchase, and Great Performances. In 2008, he was appointed as a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.
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Prior to public broadcasting, Bill Baker was President of Westinghouse Television and Chairman of Group W. Satellite Communications for almost a decade. During his tenure as Chairman the Discovery Channel and the Disney Channel were launched, and he got Oprah Winfrey started as a television talk show host. Frequently sought out as an expert on the media, he is also the author of Down the Tube: An Inside Account of the Failure of American Television (Basic Books, 1998) and the executive producer of a documentary film, The Face: Jesus in Art.
Baker, and his friend Michael O'Malley of Yale University have co-authored the book Leading With Kindness.
Using engaging stories featuring leaders from a range of organizations—Pitney Bowes, Tupperware, The Blackstone Group, Eileen Fisher Clothing, GE, Smucker’s, Walt Disney, Rodale Publishing, the Juilliard School, John Deere, Time Warner, and Burt’s Bees among them—LEADING WITH KINDNESS shows how kind leaders reinforce expectations for employees by establishing clear boundaries, telling the truth and encouraging growth through risk-taking.
Baker and O’Malley culminate with a look toward developing tomorrow’s leaders, the independent-minded Generation Y. As the authors demonstrate, today’s business leaders must instill four qualities in their successors to ensure success: self-confidence, self-control, self-awareness, and self-determination. Compelling and realistic, LEADING WITH KINDNESS leads the way to a prosperous and proud future for America.
Among numerous honors, he has won seven Emmys and two Columbia Dupont Journalism awards, and was named to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Management Hall of Fame and the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.[1]