The West Point Class of 1970 is pleased to join with the West Point Society of Annapolis in nominating William Harvey Roedy Jr (Cullum Number 29459) as a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy. Known to millions around the World as ‘Bill Roedy’, he is the son of COL (Ret) William Harvey Roedy, USMA Class of 1940, (Cullum Number 11846). COL Roedy was a WW II and Korean War veteran, commanding a Coast Artillery unit at the Pearl Harbor attack.

Bill Roedy Jr. entered West Point on July 1, 1966 with the Class of 1970. In multiple careers, he has clearly distinguished himself in everything he has pursued since graduation, always personifying the ideals of Duty, Honor, Country throughout his lifetime of global service in both the public and private sectors. Bill has had a positive impact on billions of human lives.

Distinguished Soldier

Upon graduation in 1970 Bill was commissioned in the Air Defense Artillery. After completing Airborne and Ranger Schools he volunteered for duty in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star and Air Medal awards, plus the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry (with Silver Star). From 1972 to 1974 he served as executive officer on a nuclear missile base with the 13th Air Defense Group in Northern California. He culminated his Army service as a Cold Warrior with the 559th Artillery Detachment in Northern Italy from 1974 to 1977, commanding 3 NATO Nuclear Missile Bases, earning the Meritorious Service Medal. After a distinguished career entirely in the field, Bill resigned from the Army in 1977 to attend Harvard Business School, following his father who graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government 30 years earlier.

Media Pioneer and CEO

Graduating from Harvard in 1979 with an MBA, Bill began his pioneering journey to distinguished international business success, ultimately touching the lives of more than two billion people in over 200 countries.

Home Box Office (1979 to 1989)

Bill joined HBO the early days of the Cable TV industry (1979) when it was driving a television revolution. As Director of HBO’s National Accounts, he negotiated deals with the largest cable operators. These deals created massive distribution, access and scale. For his role in the emerging cable business, Bill was later honored as a Cable TV Pioneer in 2011.

MTV Europe (1989 to 2004)

In 1989 Bill moved to London to lead MTV Networks Europe (MTVNE). Starting with a single channel, operating only in Holland and Greece he rapidly expanded the business throughout Europe. The cable industry in Europe was in its infancy and MTV pioneered a variety of content delivery methods including satellite, cable and terrestrial transmission. Bill’s first challenge was to expand the distribution of the channels to cover all of Europe. He adapted the mantra of ‘aggressive, creative, relentless distribution’. This he accomplished working through the political, cultural and regulatory challenges of each country. His key achievement was development of a localization model that empowered each MTV operation to embrace both commercial and artistic autonomy, finding the best balance between local and international content. Bill pioneered the strategy of respecting and reflecting audience diversity through local language, music, fashion, geopolitical issues and children’s programming.

MTV Networks International (2004 to 2011)

Following his remarkable success with MTV Networks Europe, Bill was promoted to Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks International (MTVNI) as well as Vice Chairman of its parent company, MTV Networks. He took charge of launching 20 different brands, expanding the reach to Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The localization strategy proved to be the key success factor in countries as politically and culturally diverse as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India, thus opening these new markets to new and informative programming. He took an immensely successful American business model, gave it multiple dialects, and expanded it throughout the world. His Choose or Lose campaigns were used to encourage first time voting in fledgling democracies from Russia to Taiwan. Under Bill’s leadership MTV built a global operation of over 200 channels in more than 200 countries, broadcast in over 30 languages, reaching a potential audience of over two billion people. That is significantly more channels and reach than any other media entity in history. Bill was also responsible for the development and operation of the Nickelodeon channel and consumer products for kids, plus the Comedy Channel for adults. MTVNI is the largest media network in the world, launching the most channels in the history of television. During this relentless expansion, Bill employed a keen sense of diplomacy to enter each country, meeting over thirty heads of state from Nelson Mandela to Mikhail Gorbachev and numerous Nobel Peace Prize Winners from Shimon Peres (President of Israel) to Jimmy Carter. His team engaged in countless disaster reliefs efforts, from the 2005 Asian tsunami to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, where Bill helped to dedicate a new hospital to replace the one destroyed. Among his many awards, Bill was chosen as Midem ‘Person of the Year’ in 2003, received the International Emmy Founders Award in 2004 and was inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in 2015.

Global Health Leader

Bill understood early on that MTVNI had a global reach that could be a positive force for good in the world. Under his guidance MTVNI pioneered the concept of corporate responsibility that is universally adopted in business today. In parallel he took leadership positions in multiple Global Health initiatives. Under Bill’s leadership MTVNI became the corporate world leader in fighting HIV/AIDS. Through MTVNI’s Staying Alive campaign Bill led the brand’s global efforts to promote HIV/AIDS education, prevention and anti-stigma. The campaign has produced award-winning HIV/AIDS related documentaries, concerts, town halls and public service announcements, all of which were made available rights free at no cost to broadcasters. Bill continues to serve as the Chairman of the Staying Alive Foundation fighting a broad range of health issues at the grass roots level to complement MTVNI’s efforts. In 1998 Bill was named the first ever Ambassador for UNAIDS (the joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS). During this time, the Executive Director of UNAIDS made the memorable statement that, “MTV can save more lives than doctors.” He has addressed the UN General Assembly on at least four occasions regarding the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and he was the General Assembly keynote speaker, along with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, at the 2010 Model UN. Bill also served as the founding Member and Chair of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS from 1999-2002.

For this work he was awarded the ‘Business Leadership Award’ presented by the US President, Bill Clinton. In April 2005, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Bill as founding Chair of the Global Media AIDS Initiative (GMAI) Leadership Committee. The GMAI was launched in 2004 with 22 participants. Under Bill’s leadership it grew to include 140 companies from 70 countries. For his work with the UN, Bill received the ‘Global Citizen Award’ presented by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2009. In 2018 Bill was elected Chairman of the widely respected American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), the preeminent HIV/AIDS research initiative. AmfAR’s recent accomplishments include dramatic progress with both lifesaving treatment as well as breakthrough developments in preventing HIV. To date amfAR has invested over $500M with over 3,000 grants for research enabling breakthrough scientific results adding to prevention and treatment as well as targeting a Countdown to a Cure (C2C) with groundbreaking gene therapy by 2020. That cure is now on the cusp of reality.

Also, in 2018 Bill was elected Vice Chairman for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). GAVI is a multi-lateral and multinational effort launched by Bill and Melinda Gates to stop preventable diseases, primarily with children around the world. Bill was initially appointed as the first Envoy/Ambassador for GAVI in 2010 by Mary Robinson, then the GAVI Chair and the former President of Ireland. Bill helped fundraising of over $7.5B, enabling GAVI to spend over $2B a year, strengthening health systems in poorer and fragile countries – in Africa and from India to Yemen – delivering vaccines of 12 leading immunizations, from pneumonia to rotavirus. Just this year GAVI responded to epidemic outbreaks, including Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 300,000 emergency vaccines, stopping the potential repeat of disasters experienced in West Africa three years ago. With Bill’s leadership, this mega operation has vaccinated over 760 million children around the world preventing more than 13 million children’s deaths. Bill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the United States Middle East Project (USMEP), promoting peace, policy and stability in the Middle East. He supports Seeds of Peace, a leadership development organization dedicated to the pursuit of peaceful change in communities divided by conflict. Two of Bill’s sons are Seeds graduates.

He is the author of ‘What Makes Business Rock’, a CNBC Best Book of Summer 2011, and is about to publish a second book on the art of intelligent perseverance. Just this year, based upon his totally unique international business experience, Bill was invited by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, USMA 1986, to participate in the State Department's new Foreign Policy Advisory Board. This prestigious Advisory Board, where Bill is an active participant, is chaired by Distinguished Graduate Bob Kimmitt, USMA 1969. Bill is a long-time ardent devotee of Sir. Winston Churchill. Inspired by Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech delivered as the Green Lecturer at Westminster College, Fulton, MO in 1946, Bill was invited in 2013 to deliver that same Green Lecture, joining the likes of Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, and of course Churchill with that honor. At that time, he told the story of freedom and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Bill was selected as a Churchill Fellow in 2017 and will be further honored by the Churchill Museum in 2020. He owns Churchill’s WWII apartment as well as two of his paintings, as acknowledged in the latest Churchill biography.

Freedom Champion

The crowning achievements of Bill Roedy’s career and life are measured in the billions (literally) of lives he has positively affected. The roots of his work are found in West Point’s Motto “Duty, Honor, Country,” extended to the World. Profit has never been Bill Roedy’s primary business motivator. While enormous profit ultimately accrued as MTV Europe and MTV International grew to become the world’s largest media empire, Bill’s mantra, “Doing good is good for business,” was always the underlying driving force. Some of Bill’s early decisions had no precedent in global business, with no apparent near-term return on investment, but were visionary in their ultimate impact on our World. While Bill will never claim credit for MTV bringing down the Berlin Wall and the demise of communism in the Eastern Block and Soviet Union, when you examine the facts there is clearly a cause and effect relationship with his actions. MTV was a catalyst for all that followed.

When Bill took charge at the fledgling MTV Europe in January 1989, he made two crucial creative decisions that would ultimately affect our entire world for generations to come. Bill immediately ordered access to the new KU band satellite. That was crucial because the KU band satellite required only a 60cm diameter dish, where the existing S band required a 3m dish. The KU band dish could be ordered by anyone with $1,000, even from behind the Iron Curtain. The second crucial decision was to NOT encrypt the signal. This meant that anyone with an antenna could access programming. Thus, satellite reception and free access to programming became a possibility for almost everyone in the Eastern Block. The results were astounding. Satellite antennas quickly sprung up all over the Poland, Hungary, Berlin, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. By the fall of 1989 there were more MTV subscribers behind the Iron Curtain than in Western Europe. Through the commercials viewers behind the Iron Curtain saw how people in the West lived, and they too wanted to live like that. The rest as they say is history. In early fall of 1989 Bill was invited to speak in East Berlin. Bill agreed, on the condition that MTV be authorized to hook up every hotel and conference center in East Berlin. The East Germans agreed to the demand and Bill was there with a TV crew and technicians who hooked them up as promised. Two days later the Berlin Wall fell. The iconic photo of two East German soldiers standing on the wall that day with the MTV umbrella became a symbol for unity and peace, as well as freedom from communist rule for 100’s of millions of citizens behind the Iron Curtain. As Bill noted at the time, “My life went from missiles to music. From the Iron Curtain to the red carpet. From the DMZ to MTV. The immense force of the missiles could not do what the power of technology and music and commercials could do. We used the reunification . . . and used the unity . . . and this became our mission . . . our mantra, ‘breaking down barriers.’”

Through Bill Roedy’s role as a worldwide Media Pioneer and CEO and Global Health leader the lives of billions of people have been touched positively, an unmatched scale of influence. He took the American values of freedom and democracy to the far corners of the world. His influence in the Global Health community continues to grow with his roles as Chairman of amfAR (fighting HIV/AIDS) and Vice Chair of GAVI (providing billions of vaccines around the world), as well as leading 6 other global health initiatives. His life continues to be guided by the West Point motto, ‘Duty, Honor, County’. Bill Roedy’s many continuing accomplishments clearly reflect all that he learned at West Point and has lived throughout his life of service to our nation and the world. Bill has been a generous supporter of all Class Fund projects, including the current Cyber Leaders Conference. Finally, Bill is a dedicated family man, married to his wife Alexandra and father to their four children. It is time for this pioneering fighter for freedom and global health to be formally honored as a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Military Academy. And what could be more appropriate at the time of the 50th Reunion of the graduation of his Class of 1970, whose motto is “Serve With Integrity.”

Sincerely,

Bill Taylor ‘70