Geraldine Laybourne, the pioneering media executive at Nickelodeon and founder of Oxygen Media, will receive the Bresnan Ethics in Business Award by the Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center at the center's Cable Hall of Fame induction ceremony on April 18 in New York.
Laybourne became a star media executive first as a creator of children's and educational programming at Viacom’s Nickelodeon, where she spent 16 years and ran the network starting in 1984. She then served as president of Disney/ABC Cable Networks (1996-98) and was founder, chairman and CEO of Oxygen Media, the younger-women-focused cable network that launched under an intense spotlight in 2000 and was sold to NBCUniversal in 2007. She is in the Cable, Broadcasting+Cable and Television Academy halls of fame, was in the first group of Multichannel News Wonder Women and has received numerous other awards and honors, including Emmys, Peabodys and Parents’ Choice awards. She currently is on the boards of Betaworks, Common Sense Media Growth, The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet and the Youth Opportunity Union (YOU) Advisory Boards and is vice chairman of Vital Voices, an organization that supports and develops promising women leaders around the world. She recently retired from the Vassar College board of trustees.
