Fall 2005 Issue
Phil Jacobs Named as CDC Foundation Board Chair
The CDC Foundation recently named Phil S. Jacobs, BellSouth’s president of Community Technologies, as the new chair of the Foundation’s board of directors. Jacobs succeeds Kent C. “Oz” Nelson, former chairman and CEO of UPS, who will remain on the board as an active member.
“Phil has an excellent understanding of our mission and vision, and his energy and exceptional leadership skills are tremendous assets for our board,” said Charles Stokes, president and CEO of the CDC Foundation.
Jacobs is passionate about the work of CDC and about the CDC Foundation’s role in helping CDC do more, faster, to fight threats to public health and safety.
“If you wind back the clock just over five years ago, when I first got involved with CDC, the world was moving at a completely different pace,” he says. “CDC has been thrown into high gear to respond to challenges like 9/11, anthrax attacks, avian flu and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. My vision for the CDC Foundation and what were trying to accomplish with our ongoing strategic planning process is to be able to quickly identify what CDC’s needs are, and determine how best to respond and adapt to those needs in highly targeted ways.”
Jacobs first became involved with helping CDC when he attended a CDC Foundation Board of Visitors meeting in 1999, where he sat next to Oz Nelson and listened to a presentation about the condition of CDC facilities. “Quite frankly, I was appalled,” he says.
Jacobs and Nelson soon formed the Friends of CDC, a group of corporate leaders dedicated to building congressional support for resources to improve CDC’s outdated facilities. Bernard Marcus, co-founder and director emeritus of The Home Depot, joined them, and they recruited other leaders. To date, the Friends of CDC have helped secure approximately $1.2 billion in federal funding for CDC facilities. In September, CDC opened several new facilities made possible, in part, by the group’s efforts. The facilities include an emerging infectious diseases laboratory, an environmental health laboratory, an expanded Marcus Emergency Operations Center and a Global Communications Center.
“It gives me an enormous sense of pride when I drive through CDC’s campuses,” says Jacobs, who joined the CDC Foundations board of directors in 2002, and was named president-elect in 2004 before assuming his current position as board chair.
Over his 32-year career with BellSouth, Jacobs has earned a steady series of promotions, becoming president of BellSouth’s Georgia Operations in 1998 before being named president of BellSouth’s newly created Community Technologies group in 2005. In his current role, he leads BellSouth’s competitive sales and distribution strategy for “multi-dwelling units” like apartments, condominiums and large-scale housing developments. A native of Washington, D.C., Jacobs earned his undergraduate degree from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Named the most respected CEO in Georgia for 2005 by Georgia Trend magazine, Jacobs is also board chair for the Georgia Department of Economic Development and the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education. Additionally, he serves on boards of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium and the Woodruff Arts Center.
Married to wife Jenny for nearly 33 years, Jacobs is proud of their three grown children and excited about welcoming their first grandson into the family this year. An avid golfer, as well as a music and movie buff, he enjoys spending time in his state-of-the-art home theater and listening to his iPod loaded with 7,500 of his favorite songs. (The second half of the Beatles’ Abbey Road is his favorite album and Raiders of the Lost Ark is his favorite movie.)
In reflecting on the CDC Foundation’s achievements over the past decade, Jacobs is particularly proud of the Foundations role in working with Bernie Marcus and The Marcus Foundation to fund CDCs Marcus Emergency Operations Center. He also cites the Foundations national and international emergency response funds as perfect examples of arming CDC experts with critical resources in times of crisis. Jacobs notes that the CDC Foundation has developed numerous successful programs that leverage the private sector’s interest in CDC science, and convened corporate leaders to address pressing public health challenges.
“For a long time, people viewed public health as the governments responsibility. Ultimately, though, the best way to address public health is through partnerships between the private sector, the public sector and individuals,” he says. “The CDC Foundation makes that possible...and makes it work. As we look toward the future, we’ll continue to seek ways to align with CDC’s mission, and to adapt quickly to CDC’s changing needs.”
- Lisa Splitlog