About the Roberts
Ralph J. Roberts and his son, Brian L. Roberts,
are visionary Philadelphia businessmen and community
leaders, as well as loyal University of Pennsylvania
alumni. They and their wives Suzanne and Aileen
are dedicated philanthropists whose extraordinary
gift to name the Roberts
Proton Therapy Center at the University of
Pennsylvania will make state-of-the-art proton
therapy available to adults and children with
cancer throughout the Eastern seaboard, in the
world's largest and most comprehensive facility
of its kind.
The Center,
which is scheduled to open to patients in 2009, will also serve a critical
research function.
Ralph J. Roberts
Ralph J. Roberts graduated
from the Wharton School in 1941 and served a
four-year tour of duty in the U.S. Navy. In 1963,
with the purchase of a 1,200-subscriber cable
television system in Tupelo, Mississippi, he
began to build what would become the largest
cable television company in the country. Today,
Comcast Corporation employs 87,000 people and
serves 24 million customers.
Mr.
Roberts is the founder and former Chairman of
the Board of Comcast, and serves on the boards
of the Council of Emeritus Directors of the Philadelphia
Orchestra, the Brandywine Museum and Conservancy,
and the Advisory Board of the Greater Philadelphia
Urban Affairs Coalition. He has been a
member of the PENN Medicine Board of Trustees
since 2002.
Ralph Roberts has received awards from the National
Cable and Telecommunications
Association, the Walter Kaitz Foundation, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith,
The National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Urban League of Philadelphia,
the
Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and the National Academy of Television
Arts & Sciences. He has been awarded honorary degrees from Holy Family College
and the University of Pennsylvania, and also received Penn's Joseph P. Wharton
Award.
Brian L. Roberts
Brian L. Roberts graduated from the Wharton
School, majoring in finance, in 1981.
He started his career at Comcast in operations,
and rose to the presidency in 1990; he
is now the Company's Chairman and CEO.
Under his leadership, Comcast has grown
into a Fortune 100 company with more than $22
billion in revenue.
The Company enjoys network content ownerships
as well as a majority ownership in Comcast-Spectacor,
whose major holdings include the Philadelphia
Flyers NHL hockey team,
the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team, and
two large multipurpose arenas in
Philadelphia. Mr. Roberts is serving his second
consecutive term as Chairman of the
Board of Directors of the National Cable & Telecommunications
Association (NCTA),
until 2007, and also served two terms as Chairman
of CableLabs, the research and
development consortium for the cable industry.
Brian Roberts has been honored for three consecutive
years by Institutional Investor magazine
as one of America's top CEOs, by the National
Cable and
Telecommunications Association, the National Association for Multi-ethnicity
in
Communications (NAMIC), by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and by The
Police Athletic League of Philadelphia. He received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's
Humanitarian Award in 2004 and, together with his father, the UJA Federation
of New
York's Steven J. Ross Humanitarian Award in 2003. Also in 2003, he co-chaired
the Resource Development Campaign for the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Both Ralph and Brian are members of the Cable
Television Hall of Fame, and are well
known for their leadership in industry, civic, and humanitarian endeavors.
Suzanne Roberts,
an award-winning actress and lifelong philanthropist,
has dedicated both her time and many of the topics
of her Emmy award-winning show “Seeking
Solutions with Suzanne” to cancer research,
survival, and awareness.
Aileen Roberts,
a breast cancer survivor, is currently a student
in Penn's School of Design and is also a member
of the Barnes Foundation Board of Trustees, The
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Board
of Directors, an overseer at the William Penn
Charter School, and a planner/volunteer at Project
HOME for the Honickman Learning
Center and Comcast Technology Labs. She has served
on the boards of the Franklin
Institute, the Avenue of the Arts, and the International
House.
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