Vice Chair, Elected 2023
Elected to the Board: 2012
Voting Trustee
Lawrence S. Kramer, founder of MarketWatch and a 45-year media industry veteran, served as president and publisher of the nation's largest newspaper, USA Today, from May 2012 until his retirement in July 2015, when he joined the board of directors of the USA Today parent company, Gannett Inc. (NYSE: GCI), and served on that board until the sale of the company in 2019.
He presently serves as a senior advisor to Advance Publications Inc, and on the board of directors of newspaper and digital media company Advance Local.
Following a 20-year career as a distinguished, award-winning reporter and editor at The Washington Post and The San Francisco Examiner, Kramer earned a reputation as one of the most influential people in internet journalism and a successful media entrepreneur. He founded MarketWatch Inc. (NASDAQ: MKTW), an internet financial news and information company, and served as its chairman and chief executive officer for a decade. He took MarketWatch public in 1999, and six years later it was acquired by Dow Jones. He then became founding president of digital media for CBS. After that, he became a senior advisor at Polaris Venture Partners.
He also served on several media company boards, including Discovery Communications (now Warner Bros. Discovery), Harvard Business School Publishing Company, American Media Inc. and TheStreet.com, which he served as both interim CEO and Chairman from 2015 until its sale in 2019.
Kramer is the author of C-Scape: Conquer the Forces Changing Business Today (HarperBusiness, 2010), a book about the digital transformation of media and commerce.
Kramer earned a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1972 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1974.
Kramer is vice chair of the Board through early May 2027 and chair of the Board Advancement and External Affairs Committee through early May 2025. He serves on the Board Executive, Athletics, and Board Organization and Nominating Committees; the National Campaign Council Executive Committee; and the Advisory Special Committee and the Subcommittee for Marketing and Communications, which he chairs. Kramer chaired the Invest Syracuse Ad Hoc Work Group and was a member of the Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion.
In 2019, Kramer received the Dritz Trustee of the Year Award. His Syracuse University service includes membership on the Newhouse Advisory Board, of which he is a past chair. He served on the search committee for the dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications in 2019-20. Kramer also is an adjunct professor in the Newhouse School and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, where he teaches media management and entrepreneurship, respectively.
He and his wife, Myla F. Lerner '73 (School of Education), have provided the lead gift for the Kramer War Room in the Digital Convergence Suite of Newhouse 3 and endowed the directorship of the recently announced Center for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, a Washington-based joint venture of the Newhouse and Maxwell schools. They have supported other initiatives in the Newhouse School, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, The College of Education, and Syracuse University Athletics.