SCTE-ISBE and the SCTE Foundation announced new funding for the Wilt J. Hildenbrand Jr. memorial scholarship through its “Friends of Wilt” campaign, which raised $40,000, matching the initial donation from the YAS Foundation.
The Wilt J. Hildenbrand Rising Leader Award is given to an emerging executive under 40 and this year will be presented to Kerry Zinger, senior manager of software development at Charter Communications. Zinger helped develop and manages Charter's IP Video Services (IPVS) application. She spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve.
The $20,000 scholarship is being awarded to five students at the STEM School Highlands Ranch in Highlands Ranch, Colo.: Corbin Baird, Katie Butler, Dylan Homesley, Aedin Elise Sarff and Ben Vigil. The students were members of the school’s First Robotics team alongside Kendrick Castillo, who was killed in a shooting at the school in May.
“Leadership comes in many shapes and sizes,” said Mark Hess, chair of the SCTE Foundation and senior VP, business and industry affairs for Comcast Technology Solutions. “We’re grateful to the ‘Friends of Wilt’ donors and the YAS Foundation for leading the charge in funding this memorial, we salute Kerry Zinger for her persistence in problem solving, and we recognize the STEM School student leaders who are blazing their own trails in robotics. More than anything else, however, we are humbled by the courage of Kendrick Castillo who selflessly led by example in preventing greater loss of life when his classmates were under assault.”
Hildenbrand died last year after a long career with Cablevision Systems. He joined the company as chief engineer in 1976 and eventually rose to executive VP, technology and engineering. He is also responsible for Cablevision's rollout of 100 Megabits-per-second residential broadband service, downloadable security for digital video services and cloud-based navigation for legacy set-top boxes.
