YouTube Founders Chad Hurley and Steven Shih Chen Earn Lifetime Engineering & Technology EMMY

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced today that Chad Hurley and Steven Shih Chen will receive the Emmy® Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 70th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards taking place at the Wynn Encore Resort & Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday, April 7th, 2019 in cooperation with NAB Show.

Former PayPal employees-Chad Hurley and Steve Shih Chen, -created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006; Youtube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries. The total number of people who use Youtube - 1,300,000,000. 300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day.

"The success of Youtube and the way it has revolutionized the way the average consumer can view, create and engage with an audience of millions is extraordinary," said Adam Sharp, President & CEO, NATAS. "Hurley and Chen are a testament to the story of the American technology entrepreneur who imagine something and through hard work and perseverance makes that dream a reality, not only creating a new method of media distribution for a wide audience, but enabling the true democratization of television."

"YouTube is one of this generation's masterpieces of scale and simplicity," said NATAS Technology & Engineering Committee Chairman Emeritus, Charles Jablonski. "It succeeded because of the extraordinary work it took to make the site easy to use, fast and capable of never-thought of amounts of video. Television now has the ability to create, store, and distribute material without the need of an intermediate party to gate-keep material to consumers."

Chad Hurley

Internet entrepreneur Chad Hurley was born on January 24, 1977, in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Hurley attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he received his bachelor's degree in fine art. After graduating, he joined eBay's PayPal division, primarily focusing on user interface. It was there that he met Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, with whom he founded YouTube.com, a video-sharing website, in 2005.

YouTube quickly became one of the web's fastest-growing sites, and was ranked as the 10th most popular website just a year after its launch.

Hurley briefly served as YouTube's CEO; not long after the company was founded, in 2006, he and Chen sold Youtube to Google. That same year, Hurley was ranked No. 28 on Business 2.0 magazine's "50 People Who Matter" list.

Steven Shih Chen

Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan on August 18, 1978. When he was eight years old, he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Prospect Heights, Illinois. He went to John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights for his freshman year of high school. For his final three years of high school, he attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he studied computer science.

Chen was an employee at PayPal, where he first met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Chen was also an early employee at Facebook, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In 2005, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Chen founded YouTube, with Chen having the position of chief technology officer. In June 2006, Chen was named by Business 2.0 as one of "The 50 people who matter now" in business.

Chen was listed as one of the "15 Asian Scientists To Watch" by Asian Scientist Magazine on 15 May 2011.
Chen was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2018.

About The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) is a service organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, educational, and technical achievements within the television industry. It recognizes excellence in television with the coveted Emmy® Awards for News & Documentary, Sports, Daytime and Daytime Creative Arts programming, as well as achievements in television Technology & Engineering.

NATAS membership consists of more than 17,000 broadcast and media professionals represented in 19 regional chapters across the country. BEYOND awards, NATAS has extensive educational programs including regional student television and its Student Award for Excellence and the National Student Production Awards for outstanding journalistic work by high school students, as well as scholarships, publications, and major activities for both industry professionals and the viewing public.

NATAS celebrates the life experiences and diversity of our team, our members, and the vibrant community of creative professionals we serve. For more information, please visit the website at www.emmyonline.com

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