Education

Apple CEO, NBA commissioner among new Duke University Board of Trustees members

Apple CEO Tim Cook, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Coca-Cola Foundation Chairwoman Lisa Borders are three of eight new Duke University Board of Trustees members, the school announced Tuesday morning.

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Duke University Chapel
DURHAM, N.C. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Coca-Cola Foundation Chairwoman Lisa Borders are three of eight new Duke University Board of Trustees members, the school announced Tuesday morning.

The new members joined the BOT on July 1.

PRM Advisors founder Patricia Morton, ValueAct Capital CEO Jeff Ubben, Jack Boyd, Anna Knight and Ben Shellhorn are the other new members.

The Board of Trustees, which has 37 members, is responsible for the school's educational mission and fiscal policies.

As Apple’s CEO, Cook has overseen the introduction of innovative new products and services including Apple Watch, Apple Pay and the new MacBook. He is leading a companywide effort to use 100 percent renewable energy at all Apple facilities, has encouraged his co-workers to give to charitable organizations in their community and started a generous program at Apple to match employee donations.

Cook was recently ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine’s 2015 list of the World’s Greatest Leaders, and in 2014 he was named “Person of the Year” by the Financial Times.

Before being named CEO in 2011, Cook was Apple’s chief operating officer, responsible for the company’s worldwide sales and operations. He was a Fuqua Scholar at Duke, where he earned an MBA, and holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University.

Borders is a former president of the city council and vice mayor of Atlanta and a former president of the Grady Health Foundation, the fundraising arm of Grady Health System, Georgia’s largest public hospital.

She previously served as CEO of LMB LLC, a consulting company advising clients on community reinvestment, external affairs, marketing and communications, and as senior vice president of marketing and external affairs with Cousins Properties Inc., an Atlanta-based real estate investment trust.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in French from Duke and a master’s degree in health administration from the University of Colorado at Denver.

The NBA Board of Governors unanimously elected Silver as commissioner in 2014. He was instrumental in the NBA's new nine-year media rights agreements with Turner Broadcasting and the Walt Disney Co., which run through the 2024-25 season.

Silver previously worked as NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer for eight years, playing key roles in the negotiation of the NBA's last three collective bargaining agreements with the National Basketball Players Association and in the development of the WNBA and NBA Development League.

Prior to that position Silver spent more than eight years as president and COO of NBA Entertainment. He earned a bachelor's degree from Duke and a law degree from the University of Chicago.

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