Bright House Networks president Nomi Bergman and Mediacom Communications chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso are among the nine winners of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s Vanguard Awards.
The awards honoring cable industry leaders will be handed out April 3 during a ceremony at the NCTA’s Cable Show ’09 in Washington D.C. Bergman and Commisso won their awards in the distinguished leadership category.
Bergman and her team at Bright House Networks have spearheaded numerous cable operator technologies, including a digital phone service in Tampa in 2005 and the largest Start Over deployment last year, both of which were in the Tampa Bay system.
She also a played a key role in several important industry initiatives including the formation of Canoe Ventures, the Clearwire joint venture, and this year’s show consolidation schedule.
Bergman is currently serving on the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers board of directors, and has been a leader in projects, events and conferences for NCTA, WICT and CableLabs. Bergman was CED’s Person of the Year in 2008 (see story here).
Commisso is a 27-year veteran of the cable industry and has served as Mediacom’s chairman and CEO since founding its predecessor in 1995. Prior to Mediacom, he was executive vice president, chief financial officer and a director at Cablevision Industries.
As a member of both the NCTA board of directors and American Cable Association, Commisso has been instrumental in bringing the two organizations closer together to work on matters that mutually benefit both large and small cable operators, according to the NCTA press release.
In the science and technology category, Cox Communications’ Jay Rolls, senior vice president, technology development, also snagged a Vanguard Award. Rolls is being honored for his role in directing all of Cox’s enterprise-wide engineering design, development and future technologies across all of the company’s residential and commercial product lines.
In 2006, Rolls assumed his leadership for technology engineering across Cox’s entire product platform of voice, video, data, and the development of wireless services. Rolls is actively involved with CableLabs, and currently serves as chairman of the DOCSIS Certification Board.
Insight Communications’ Dinesh Jain, president and chief operating officer, won his Vanguard Award in the cable operations category.
According the NCTA press release, Jain is credited with driving Insight’s consistent basic customer growth, its double-digit revenue and cash flow growth. Insight also attributes statistics detailing customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, incoming call statistics, churn reduction and other operating metrics – which are at the highest levels in company history – to Jain’s strong leadership and management skills.
Other award winners are: Robert Stanzione, chairman and CEO of Arris, in the associates and affiliates category; Charlie Collier, president and general manager, AMC, young leadership; Jim Walton, president, CNN Worldwide, programmers; Bonnie Hathaway, vice president, community relations and public affairs, Time Warner Cable, government and community relations; Sean Bratches, vice president, sales and marketing, ESPN, marketing.
