George H.W. Bush Lifetime of Leadership Award
Joseph Cullman was regularly recognized as one of the country’s foremost business leaders and as a leader in civic and charitable causes. He was a varsity wrestler and a football and tennis player for his residential college. In 1957, Cullman became president of Philip Morris and in 1967 its chairman and CEO. During his dozen years in that position, Financial World magazine three times named him one of the ten outstanding CEOs of American business and industry (1976, 1978, and 1979) and in 1977 selected him the most outstanding CEO.
Cullman was a director of IBM’s World Trade Corporation, the Ford Motor Company, Bankers Trust Company, Bankers Trust New York Corporation, and Levi Strauss & Co. Despite being a member of numerous boards of directors, he made time to serve as a president and director of the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Memorial Foundation and later as its honorary president. In 1972 he received the National Urban League’s Equal Employment Opportunity Award.
Cullman’s interest in historic preservation and wildlife was reflected by his appointment as a trustee of the New York State Nature and Historical Preserve Trust, trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, and member of the national board of the Smithsonian Associates. He was chairman of the World Wildlife Fund’s board of directors executive committee and a member of its international executive committee. He was also president, later chairman and CEO, of the International Atlantic Salmon Foundation.
In 1982 Cullman was named President of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and from 1985 to 1988 was its chairman. He was a major contributor to the success of the Virginia Slims women’s professional tennis circuit. Yale’s Cullman Tennis Center commemorates his lifelong love affair with tennis.
A former member of the University Council Committee, the Leadership Council for the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and a Sterling Fellow, Cullman received the Yale Medal in 1974.
