JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg to be Honored at Yale CEO Summit

New Haven, Conn., December 10, 2008 — Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Verizon, will each accept the "Legend in Leadership Award" of the Yale School of Management Chief Executive Leadership Institute at ceremonies to be held December 11 and 12 in Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria.

The awards will be presented at the 58th gathering of the Yale CEO Summit of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the nation’s first CEO College. Conference organizer Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management, commented, "Both of these leaders provide genuine models of courageous visionary leadership with superb execution, impeccable integrity, and rare personal humility. Despite the turbulence in their industries they transcended conventional wisdom among analysts and the prevailing practices of their peers to pioneer highly successful new paths."

Jamie Dimon has rebounded from a career derailment as a victim of organizational politics to become one of the world’s most revered financial leaders — leading the collaborative response to the collapse of Long Term Capital a decade ago and the failing Bank One following its troubled merger with First Chicago. He then merged the bank into JPMorgan Chase where he presciently diagnosed the mispackaging and mispricing of risk in various opaque financial instruments. He warned the industry and aggressively cleaned his own institution’s balance sheet, preparing JPMorgan to help bring stability to the markets.

Under Ivan Seidenberg's leadership, Verizon has become a healthy, cutting-edge telecom company, providing customers with the most advanced and innovative broadband experiences. Seidenberg was a central leading force in forging Verizon through a number of mergers and acquisitions, by bringing together the assets of Bell Atlantic Mobile, GTE Wireless and the U.S. properties including Bell Atlantic and NYNEX (1997), GTE (2000) and MCI (2006). He also boldly ignored short-term cynics and invested in the hugely successful fiber optic service, FiOS, the premier broadband service to the home.

Past winners of this award include: Louis Gerstner of IBM; The Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus; Vanguard founder Jack Bogle; McKinsey founder Marvin Bower; financier Albert H. Gordon; PepsiCo’s Roger Enrico; Coca-Cola’s Don Keough; Jim Kelly of UPS; Richard Teerlink of Harley-Davidson; Staples founder Tom Stemberg; Charlotte Beers of J. Walter Thompson; Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson; Quincy Jones; Terry Semel of Yahoo!; Herbert V. Kohler, Jr. of Kohler Co.; financier, entrepreneur, and regulator William Donaldson; Stephen Schwarzman of The Blackstone Group; and Richard Harrington of Thomson.

The CEO Summit will be held December 11 and 12 at the Waldorf Astoria. While the discussions of the CEO Summit are off-the-record, the press is invited to attend the two “Legend in Leadership Award” presentations and discussion sessions that will immediately follow: to Dimon on Thursday, December 11, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m. in the Empire Room and to Seidenberg on Friday, December 12 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in the Hilton Room of the Waldorf. The presentations and follow-up discussion sessions are on-the-record, while the rest of the Summit is off-the-record.

The conference theme is "New Beginnings for Existing Enterprises." Distinguished global corporate leaders from across industries will engage in lively, candid discussions with regulators, financiers, entrepreneurs, and scholars at this invitation-only leaders’ conference hosted by the Yale School of Management.

Sonnenfeld explained the value of this semi-annual gathering: "Given the historic crises that ripple across each sector of our economy, a sense of peril in global systems is matched by uncharted opportunities. No scholars, consultants, or politicians have the ready solutions to the unparalleled challenges today’s CEOs face. CEOs, presidents, and chairmen of major corporations have little opportunity to step outside the immediate demands of running a complex business to reflect on new trends and strategic opportunities. Yet such reflection can prove immensely valuable to both individuals and the organizations they run. The agendas for our CEO Summits are drawn from the topics requested by our participating CEOs and so inevitably address the challenges on the minds of top global corporate leaders and engage their own live case studies."

Among the conference participants are such opinion leaders as: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon; Verizon CEO Ivan Seiderberg; Boeing CEO James McNerney; Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman; Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson; Mark Fields, President of Ford Motor Co.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco CEO David Delen; MBIA CEO Jay Brown; Raymond James Financial CEO Thomas James; Goldman Sachs International Vice Chairman Robert Hormats; Tupperware CEO Rick Goings; Calpine CEO Robert May; Harley-Davidson turnaround CEO Richard Teerlink ; Vanguard founder Jack Bogle; former SEC Chairman William Donaldson; Michael Holland of Holland & Co; U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Cynthia Glassman; and Obama Administration Pentagon Transition leader Ashton Carter; as well as renowned scholars including Yale’s Robert Shiller and Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz. Sponsors include CNBC, UPS, Deloitte, Russell Reynolds Associates, Thomson Reuters, North Highland, and The NASDAQ OMX Educational Foundation.

The Chief Executive Leadership Institute, the world first "CEO College," is part of the Yale School of Management. It was founded in 1989 to provide original research on leadership and lively, current educational forums through peer-driven learning for accomplished top leaders across sectors.

For an interview with Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, or to register for the Legend in Leadership Award presentation ceremonies, contact Tabitha Wilde, 203.432.6010, tabitha.wilde@yale.edu; or Bonnie Blake, 203.915.4783, bonnie.blake@yale.edu. The media registration deadline is 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10.