Saybrook President Lorne Buchman is pleased to announce that Chip Conley, a humanistic and socially conscious entrepreneur, will be the Honorary Degree recipient at the June, 2009 graduation. He has also graciously agreed to be graduation speaker.
The Honorary Doctorate Committee, composed of students, faculty, administrative staff and board carefully considered the outstanding candidates who had been nominated by members of the Saybrook community and graduating students for this year’s honorary degree. The candidates who were chosen each represented a substantial body of work and high achievement in disciplines that embrace our values and principles. Although there were many nominees of substance, the top choices were forwarded to the President and the Board of Trustees for consideration, resulting in the decision to elect Chip Conley.
Chip’s most recently book PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow is introducing a new generation to Maslow’s work, and is once again demonstrating the relevancy of his writings and humanistic thought to contemporary business practice.
Chip has won numerous awards including Guerrilla Marketer of the Year from the American Travel Marketing Executives, EmergingGrowth Company of the Year from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, National Humanitarian Hospitality Company of theYear, and Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year from Ernst & Young. Chip was also recently featured as one of Lodging magazine’s 75 Most Influential Leaders in the Travel Industry.
Chip’s other books are The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business, which was published by
Simon & Schuster in 2001, and Marketing that Matters, by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. in 2006. He has a B.A. from Stanford University as well as an M.B.A., also from Stanford.Chip’s philanthropic interests center on teens-at-risk, as he was the creator of San Francisco’s annual Celebrity Pool Toss that raises $350,000 annually for the Tenderloin After-School Program. Chip became the foster parent for a 15-year old Tenderloin teen who now is 28.