Terry Semel
Terry Semel at the Web 2.0 Conference 2005
Born	(1943-02-24) February 24, 1943 (age 69) Brooklyn, New York
Residence	East Gate Old Bel Air, Los Angeles
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Jewish
Education	Bachelor of Science
Alma mater	Long Island University
Religion	Jewish[1]
Spouse	Maryann Semel (divorced) Jane Bovingdon Semel (m.1977 - present) (4 children)
Children	4

Terry Semel (born on February 24, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.) is an American corporate executive who was the chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Incorporated. Previously, Semel spent 24 years at Warner Bros., where he served as chairman and co-chief executive officer. In June 2007, Semel resigned as CEO due in part to pressure from shareholders' dissatisfaction over Semel's compensation (in 2006 - salary $1, stock options worth $70 million) and performance. Semel had earned over $500 million in his tenure at Yahoo, while Yahoo's stock appreciated at 40% per year. In the same period, Yahoo's closest competitor, Google, saw stock growth of about 55% per year.

Early life[link]

Semel's father was a women's coat designer and his mother was a bus company executive. He was raised in Bay Terrace, a community in Bayside, Queens. He was the middle child and has two sisters.^[2] At the age of 23, he graduated from Long Island University in Brooklyn with a B.S. degree in accounting.

Career[link]

Yahoo compensation[link]

In April 2001, Semel was granted stock options with an SEC Fair Value of over $110 million as a bonus to join Yahoo. On March 10, 2004 Semel was granted options to purchase Yahoo stock worth $120 million at an exercise price of $41.70 ( the low closing price for 2004 was $41.65). Within a month that stock was trading at $56.00, making him a profit of $50 million on that grant alone. Between 2003 and 2006 he netted $450 million as a result of exercising options and selling stock. On March 7, 2007 he held stock and unexercised options with a value of $350 million, which he was granted as compensation. During June 2006, Terry Semel's annual salary was reduced to one dollar, in exchange for millions of stock options in Yahoo. His previous annual salary was US$600,000.

Over the past three years Semel sold 18.1 million of his stock options for a gain of $450 million. He maintains another 18.6 million unexercised stock options.

Yahoo!-China cooperation controversy[link]

As CEO, Semel approved Yahoo!'s cooperation with Chinese officials to release previously confidential Yahoo! information to the Chinese government. This action by Yahoo! was not well received and Semel showed signs of regret as to how that information was being used. For example, in a widely publicized exchange at The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference, Semel was asked if Yahoo! would have cooperated with Nazi Germany. In response, Semel, who is Jewish, stated, "I don’t know how I would have felt then." He added, "I don’t feel good about what’s happening in China today." ^[3] When questioned on this topic in a Q & A discussion with Peter Bazalgette at The Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention in 2005, his response was "We have to abide by the laws in the countries in which we operate"

Lost chance to take over Google[link]

After joining Yahoo, company founders Jerry Yang and David Filo suggested he look at buying Google, whose founders looked up Yahoo's inventors. Semel had dinner with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, asking them what their business was with Yahoo paying only $7 million annually as its biggest licensor of Google search technology. So Semel proposed to buy Google. They replied that they wanted $1 billion and didn't want to sell. Semel said he'd think about the price. Another dinner and Semel agreed to the $1 billion. Larry Page and Sergey Brin replied that they wanted $3 billion and didn't want to sell.^{[citation needed]}

Resignation[link]

Semel ended his six-year tenure as chief executive officer Monday, June 18, 2007 and handed over the reins to co-founder Jerry Yang in the Internet icon's latest attempt to regain investor confidence. Semel, 64, remained chairman in a non-executive role.^[4] Besides naming Yang as its new CEO, Yahoo appointed Susan Decker as its president. Decker, who had been recently promoted to oversee Yahoo's advertising operations, had widely been seen as Semel's apparent heir. Semel later resigned from his post as non-executive Chairman from Yahoo completely on January 31, 2008.

Other activities[link]

Semel is currently on the Board of Directors of Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, The Paley Center for Media and the Guggenheim Museum. In June 2004, Semel and his wife made a donation of $25 million to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. As such, the name of the Institute was renamed to the "Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA."[1] In 2005, Semel was given the UCLA Medal, that University's highest honor, and the "Legend in Leadership Award" from the Chief Executive Leadership Institute of the Yale School of Management.

Personal[link]

His wife, Jane Bovingdon Semel was a former secretary to the actress Susan George.^{[citation needed]} They married in 1977 and have a son Eric (b. March 15, 1969) and three daughters, Courtenay Semel (b. November 11, 1979), Lily Bovington Semel (b. 1985), and Kate Semel (b. March, 1992).^{[citation needed]}. Semel had been previously married to Maryann Semel but they divorced in 1974.^{[citation needed]}.

Semel lives in the East Gate Old Bel Air section of Los Angeles, California.

His son, Eric Semel, is the CEO of 365 Media Group in the UK.^{[citation needed]} His daughter Courtenay Semel appeared on the reality show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive in 2005.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• One-dollar salary
• List of single-digit salary earners

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963
Born	(1927-02-20) February 20, 1927 (age 85) Miami, Florida
Occupation	Actor, director, writer, diplomat
Years active	1943–2001 (acting)
Spouse	Juanita Hardy (m.1950-1965; divorced) Joanna Shimkus (m.1976–present)

Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE^[1] ( /ˈpwɑːtjeɪ/ or /ˈpwɑːti.eɪ/; born February 20, 1927) is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.

In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor^[2] for his role in Lilies of the Field.^[3] The significance of this achievement was later bolstered in 1967 when he starred in three well-received films To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box office star of that year. In all three films, issues revolve around the race of the characters Poitier portrays.^[4] In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.

Poitier has directed a number of popular movies such as A Piece of the Action; Uptown Saturday Night, and Let's Do It Again (with friend Bill Cosby), and Stir Crazy (starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder). In 2002, 38 years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Award, designated "To Sidney Poitier in recognition of his remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being."^[5] Since 1997 he has been the Bahamian ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Sidney Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America's highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama.^[6]

Early life[link]

Sidney Poitier was born in Miami, in Coconut Grove, where his Bahamian parents, Evelyn (née Outten) and Reginald James Poitier,^[7] traveled to sell tomatoes and other produce from their farm on Cat Island.^[8] His birth was two months premature and he was not expected to survive, but his parents remained three months in Miami to nurse him to health.^[9] Because of his birth in the U.S., he automatically gained U.S. citizenship.^[9] Poitier was raised in a Roman Catholic family.^[10] He grew up with his family on Cat Island, The Bahamas, then a British colony. At age 10, he moved to Nassau with his family.^[11][12] At the age of 15 he was sent to Miami to live with his brother. At the age of 17, he moved to New York City and held a string of jobs as a dishwasher. A Jewish waiter sat with him every night for several weeks helping him learn to read the newspaper. He then decided to join the United States Army after which he worked as a dishwasher until a successful audition landed him a spot with the American Negro Theater.^{[citation needed]}

Hollywood[link]

Acting career[link]

Poitier gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2009.

Poitier joined the American Negro Theater, but was rejected by audiences. Contrary to what was expected of black actors at the time, Poitier's tone deafness made him unable to sing.^[13] Determined to refine his acting skills and rid himself of his noticeable Bahamian accent, he spent the next six months dedicating himself to achieving theatrical success. On his second attempt at the theater, he was noticed and given a leading role in the Broadway production Lysistrata, for which he received good reviews. By the end of 1949, he had to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance in No Way Out, as a doctor treating a white bigot (played by Richard Widmark), was noticed and led to more roles, each considerably more interesting and more prominent than those most black actors of the time were offered. Poitier's breakout role was as a member of an incorrigible high school class in Blackboard Jungle (1955).^{[citation needed]}

Poitier was the first male black actor to be nominated for a competitive Academy Award (for The Defiant Ones, 1958). He was also the first black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor (for Lilies of the Field in 1963). (James Baskett was the first to receive an Oscar, an Honorary Academy Award for his performance as Uncle Remus in the Walt Disney production of Song of the South in 1948, while Hattie McDaniel predated them both, winning as Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1939's Gone with the Wind).

He acted in the first production of A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway in 1959, and later starred in the film version released in 1961. He also gave memorable performances in The Bedford Incident (1965), and A Patch of Blue (1965) co-starring Elizabeth Hartman and Shelley Winters. In 1967, he was the most successful draw at the box office, the commercial peak of his career, with three successful films, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; To Sir, with Love and In the Heat of the Night. The last film featured his most successful character, Virgil Tibbs, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, detective whose subsequent career was the subject of two sequels: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970) and The Organization (1971).^{[citation needed]}

Poitier began to be criticized for being typecast as over-idealized black characters who were not permitted to have any sexuality or personality faults, such as his character in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Poitier was aware of this pattern himself, but was conflicted on the matter: he wanted more varied roles, but also felt obliged to set a good example with his characters to defy previous stereotypes, as he was the only major black actor in the American film industry at the time.^{[citation needed]} In 2001, Poitier received an Honorary Academy Award for his overall contribution to American cinema.

Directorial career[link]

Poitier directed several films, the most successful being the Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder comedy Stir Crazy which for years was the highest grossing film directed by a person of African descent.^[14] His feature film directorial debut was the western Buck and the Preacher in which Poitier also starred, alongside Harry Belafonte. Poitier replaced original director Joseph Sargent. The trio of Poitier, Cosby, and Belafonte reunited again (with Poitier again directing) in Uptown Saturday Night. Poitier also directed Cosby in Let's Do It Again, A Piece of the Action, and Ghost Dad. Poitier also directed the first popular dance battle movie Fast Forward in 1985.

From 1998 to 2003 he served as a Member of the Board of Directors of The Walt Disney Company.^[15]

Recording career[link]

Poitier recorded an album with the composer Fred Katz called "Poitier Meets Plato" in which Poitier recites passages from Plato's writings.

Diplomatic career[link]

In April 1997, Poitier was appointed Ambassador of the Bahamas to Japan, a position he currently holds. He is also the Ambassador of the Bahamas to UNESCO.

Personal life[link]

Poitier was first married to Juanita Hardy from April 29, 1950 until 1965. He has been married to Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian-born former actress of Lithuanian and Irish descent, since January 23, 1976. He has four daughters with his first wife and two with his second: Beverly,^[16] Pamela,^[17] Sherri,^[18] Gina,^[19] Anika,^[20] Sydney Tamiia.^[21]

Honours and awards[link]

• 1958 British Academy Film Award for Best Foreign Actor for The Defiant Ones
• 1958 Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin Film Festival) for The Defiant Ones^[22]
• 1963 Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Lilies of the Field
• 1963 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Lilies of the Field
• 1963 Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin Film Festival) for Lilies of the Field^[23]
• 1974 Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE)
• 1982 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award^[24]
• 1992 AFI Life Achievement Award
• 1995 Kennedy Center Honors
• 1997 Appointed non-resident Bahamian Ambassador to Japan
• 1999 SAG Life Achievement Award
• 2000 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special for The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
• 2001 NAACP Image Award - Hall of Fame Award
• 2001 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album – Rick Harris, John Runnette (producers) and Sidney Poitier for The Measure of a Man
• 2002 Honorary Oscar – "For his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen and for representing the industry with dignity, style and intelligence"
• 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom^[25]
• 2011 Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute^[26] honoring his life and careers

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

Director[link]

Television[link]

Works about Poitier[link]

Autobiographies[link]

Poitier has written three autobiographical books:

• This Life (1980)
• The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (2000)
• Life Beyond Measure – letters to my Great-Granddaughter (2008, an Oprah's Book Club selection).

Poitier is also the subject of the biography Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (2004) by historian Aram Goudsouzian.^{[citation needed]}

Movies about Poitier[link]

• Sidney Poitier, an Outsider in Hollywood (Sidney Poitier, an outsider à Hollywood). Documentary film by Catherine Arnaud. Arte, France, 2008, 70 minutes.
• Sidney Poitier: One Bright Light. American Masters, PBS. USA, 2000. 60 minutes.^[27]

See also[link]

	African American portal
	Bahamas portal
	Biography portal
	Film portal

• List of African American firsts
• David Hampton, an impostor who posed as Poitier's son "David" in 1983, which inspired a play and a film, Six Degrees of Separation

References[link]