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A Special Night for Intel: Willam O. Douglas Corporate Achievement Award

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Every so often someone will tell me my job sounds glamorous – those people usually aren’t lawyers and rarely work for large corporations. The fact is that as General Counsel a lot of my time is spent dealing with a more challenging side of our business. I’m not complaining of course – it comes with the territory – but it’s the reason why days like I had last week are so incredibly special.

Last week, I traded in my courtroom suit for some evening wear and headed down to Los Angeles for the annual William O. Douglas dinner. William Douglas remains to this day the longest serving Justice on the United States Supreme Court (1939 – 1975). His legacy in American jurisprudence is a fierce defense of the rights of the individual and a passionate commitment to the plight of the poor and underrepresented in our society. Several years ago, Public Counsel, the largest philanthropic association of lawyers and judges in California, endowed an honorarium in Douglas’ name. Each year Public Counsel holds a fund raising dinner where they present one outstanding individual with the William O. Douglas Award, and one outstanding corporation with the Public Counsel Corporate Achievement Award. This year the recipient of the William O. Douglas award was Marion Wright Edelman, President and Founder of the Children’s Defense Fund – and, as you may have guessed, the Corporate Achievement Award went to Intel.

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The event itself was pretty spectacular. You can see photos from the event and read the press release herehttp://www.publiccounsel.org/dd2008photos.htm

Roughly 1500 attendees, Jay Leno as the emcee, a beautiful setting in LA, and to top it all off, the event raised $2.5M for public interest programs. My role was to accept the Corporate Achievement Award on behalf of Intel and our employees. I am proud of Intel every day, and in the end what matters most is our employees feel proud of what we are doing. I have to tell you that it sure feels good when other people also recognize the amazing things we do and the amazing spirit of our employees. To stand on a public stage and accept an award for some of the good things we do as a company has a way of putting the tougher parts of my job into perspective.

I’d like our employees to remember the next time you hear or read something critical of Intel, or you start to wonder if all the hard work is really worth it, remind yourself that in cities, towns and villages all over the world from Los Angeles, California to a rural community in Nigeria, there are people in need who see our company as one that is offering some hope and opportunity. And I want to thank our employees for the work they do every day and for letting me represent this great company at events like this from time to time.