The Fulbright Association is pleased to announce that Mr. David G. Bradley, Chairman of Atlantic Media, will be the recipient of the 2017 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be given at a reception on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, during the Association’s 40th Annual Conference.
The Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award was created in 2000 to honor Fulbright alumni whose distinguished career and civic and cultural contributions seek to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy, and perception. Recipients show exemplary commitments to creative leadership and liberal education. Mr. Bradley joins the company of 19 esteemed laureates, among them Renee Fleming, Philip Glass, John Lithgow, and Thomas Pickering.
Since 1999, Mr. Bradley has been the Chairman of Atlantic Media, whose holdings include The Atlantic, Quartz, National Group, and Government Executive Media Group. His leadership is credited with transforming The Atlantic magazine into a profitable media enterprise with robust digital, live events, and consulting divisions.
A graduate of Swarthmore College, Harvard Business School, and Georgetown University Law Center, Mr. Bradley was a Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines in 1977 and 1978. During his Fulbright grant, he studied multinational corporations and taught economics.
In his mid-twenties, Mr. Bradley launched his first business, the Advisory Board Company, a for-profit think tank ultimately serving 4,000 corporations, financial institutions, and medical centers around the world, as well as its sister enterprise, the Corporate Executive Board. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mr. Bradley also serves on the boards of the Council of Foreign Relations, General Assembly, KIPP DC, and New America Foundation.
The Bradleys have maintained a close connection with the country where Mr. Bradley was a Fulbright Scholar, visiting the Philippines regularly and undertaking significant philanthropic work to protect abused children in Manila through their family foundation. In 1994, Mr. Bradley and his wife, Mrs. Katherine Brittain Bradley, founded the CityBridge Foundation (then called the Advisory Board Foundation). The Foundation’s early work led to the creation of 75 child protective services facilities in the Philippines, and Mr. Bradley serves as the Founding Chair of the Child Protective Network, formally established in 2002. In January 2017, CityBridge Education, a nonprofit education incubator dedicated to improving Washington, D.C. public schools, was launched out of the CityBridge Foundation.
“We are very proud to count David as a Fulbrighter and delighted to share our admiration with this award,” says John Bader, Executive Director of the Fulbright Association. “David represents the best of our community: a relentless champion for journalistic excellence, a fearless speaker of truth to power, and an internationalist at his core. We are as inspired by his example as we are happy to celebrate his achievements.”
—Michelle Dimino