Don Shultz Award

"IMC is not a campaign, it is a system for creating and delivering value across the customer experience.” - Don Schultz

Don Schultz

Father of IMC

The Don Schultz Award for Innovation in Teaching, Theory and Practice of Integrated Marketing Communication honors the legacy of late Medill Professor Don Schultz, who played a pivotal role in creating the field of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and helped establish the IMC department at Medill in the early 1990s.

This international award is open to marketing professors or professionals who have demonstrated excellence in teaching the principles of IMC and have developed new frameworks for communicating with customers and driving financial performance.

Learn more about Don Schultz and his legacy.

Wendy Clark

Wendy Clark, 2026 Don Schultz Award Recipient

Northwestern’s Medill School, the Schultz Family, and The Athena Project are proud to present this year's Don Schultz Award to veteran marketer, operator, and agency executive, Wendy Clark.

Called "one of the most important women in advertising" by Advertising Age, Wendy is Partner & President at Consello Group, a leading global advisory. Wendy most recently served as the Global Chief Executive of Dentsu International and previously served as CEO of DDB Worldwide. She arrived at DDB after serving as President of Sparkling Brands & Strategic Marketing at Coca-Cola North America.

Wendy's career accomplishments have been widely recognized, including her 2007 induction into the American Advertising Federation's Advertising Hall of Achievement and, in 2017, Advertising Age's naming Wendy their "Executive of the Year".