Award Recipients

The New Frontier Awards are named after President Kennedy's bold challenge to Americans given in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention on July 15, 1960:

We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier… a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils — a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises — it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook — it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security … Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric … but I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier.
The New Frontier Awards are symbolized by a ship's navigational compass in a wooden box bearing the inscription: "We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier … I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier."
– John F. Kennedy.