Ice Bucket Challenge: 10 Tech CEOs that got iced to raise ALS awareness

by Gary Oldwood on 16 August 2014 · 2597 views

There’s a new trend going on the past few days, and apart from the entertainment it gives it also has a good cause. I’m talking about the ALS awareness challenge which, although has been going on for months, it got huge attention the past couple of weeks when famous personalities started participating.

What Is The ALS Awareness Challenge?

First of all, ALS stands for “Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis” and is also referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS is a fatal progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement (you can read more about it here). The famous scientist Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with ALS when he was 21.

The challenge is very simple (but needs guts!): You must fill a bucket with ice water and then dump it on your head. The whole thing must be recorded and uploaded in social media. That’s the hardest (and best) part of the challenge! The next step is to challenge others to do the same within 24 hours, and if they back down, they have to make a donation to a charity.

You must be wondering how effective this challenge is, since at a first glance it looks like it’s not going to raise awareness or the number of donations regarding the ALS disease. Well, you must know that donations to the ALS Association have significantly increased since last year; in fact, the same period last year the donations were $32,000, whilst this year they have exceeded the impressive amount of $5.5 million (and they keep going). And that huge jump is because popular personas started participating in this challenge. Friends and relatives of Pete Frates, a former baseball player in Boston College, were the first ones to make a great promotion of the challenge in Boston, which then took off. Pete Fretes was diagnosed with ALS in 2012 and is now 29 years old.

It didn’t take long for the challenge to become a trend. Politicians, athletes, actors and many public figures followed it; at the time of writing of this article more than 1 million people have actually took the challenge. Check here how the challenge was spread, starting from Boston (graph from Facebook):

Let’s take a look at 10 CEOs from the tech industry that accepted the challenge and had ice water dumped on themselves:

1. Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook’s founder was challenged by Governor Chris Christie, and was quick to respond with a video he posted on Facebook:

He then challenged Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg and Reed Hastings.

2. Bill Gates

This person is widely known for his donations and charity work (apart from everything else) and accepted Mark Zuckerberg's challenge. He did it in style! His nominations were Elon Musk, Chris Anderson and Ryan Seacrest.

3. Tim Cook

Apple CEO took the challenge as well:

He passed on the challenge to two people: Disney CEO Iger Bob (who accepted the challenge) and Dr. Dre.

4. Dick Costolo

Twitter CEO wasn't afraid to dump the ice water on his head either.

5. Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was more than happy to take part in the challenge and raise awareness for ALS. He nominated Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Larry Page.

6. Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos accepted Satya Nadella's Ice Bucket Challenge and dumped ice water on himself in Amazon's all-hands meeting:

He then proceeded to challenge Star Trek stars William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and George Takei.

7. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Google's co-founders both accepted the challenge and got themselves dumped with ice water:

8. John Legere

John Legere, T-Mobile CEO, got iced not only by one but by multiple buckets. He also challenged Ralph de la Vega (AT&T Mobility CEO), Marcelo Claure (Sprint Corporation CEO) and Lowell C. McAdam (Verizon Communications CEO).