Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, to speak at Philadelphia University Commencement on May 18

Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, the nation’s leading business magazine, will speak at Philadelphia University’s 124th Commencement Sunday, May 18 at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts. At the ceremony, Forbes will be awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters.

In addition to his role as top editor of the magazine, which has a circulation of more than 900,000, Forbes is chairman and chief executive officer of its parent company Forbes, a publishing and media firm.

“I am so pleased that Steve Forbes, one of the world’s most respected and talented business publishers, will speak at Philadelphia University’s 2008 Commencement,” said Philadelphia University President Stephen Spinelli Jr., Ph.D., who will officiate at his first Commencement ceremony as president this spring. “He has exhibited extraordinary leadership across many endeavors both in and out of the business and publishing worlds, and I am quite sure his insights will resonate with our graduates as they prepare to transition from college life to the working world.”

In 1990, Forbes assumed his position as chief of the publishing company that was founded by his grandfather, B.C. Forbes, and later headed by his father, Malcolm Forbes. Since Steve Forbes took the helm, the company has launched a variety of new publications and businesses, including ForbesLife, a lifestyle supplement; ForbesLife Executive Woman; and Forbes Asia, as well as numerous foreign-language editions of the magazine. Forbes also publishes the Gilder Technology Report, as well as a number of investment newsletters.

Forbes, who campaigned for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States in 1996 and 2000, serves on the boards of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Heritage Foundation and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is on the Board of Overseers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, on the Board of Visitors for the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and served on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University for ten years.

Steve Forbes received a B.A. in history from Princeton University, where he was the founding editor of Business Today, which became the country’s largest magazine published by and for students, with a circulation of 200,000. The magazine continues to be published today by Princeton undergraduate students.

Philadelphia University’s Commencement will be held at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park at 11 a.m. on Sunday, May 18. For more information about this year’s Commencement, go to http://www.philau.edu/commencement/.

 

For more information, call the Office of Academic Affairs at 215.951.2705 or email The Office of Academic Affairs at AcademicAffairs@PhilaU.edu.