Jillian Crawford and Suneel K. Gupta have been chosen as the Kellogg School of Management’s McCormick Scholars for 2007, Media Management Center executive director Michael P. Smith announced this week.

Crawford and Gupta will receive full tuition for three academic quarters at Kellogg, where they are majors in the media management program. They were chosen after a rigorous application process by a panel of judges from media and academics.

“Jillian and Suneel are terrific choices for the Scholars Program,” said Smith. “They bring amazing knowledge, inquisitiveness and energy to the media industry. They are very passionate about media, and it is hard not to be infected by that passion.”

Crawford is a JD-MBA candidate at Kellogg and Northwestern University School of Law. She has worked in digital media at AT&T wireless, managing the new product marketing for a youth-oriented mobile messaging device. In an internship at Tribune Interactive, she helped develop a strategy for growth in wireless content and advertising. Her background includes digital filmmaking, and she is co-director of the first Social Media Marketing Symposium, co-sponsored by Kellogg and the Media Management Center. Crawford earned an undergraduate degree in public policy from Duke University.

Gupta is also a candidate in the JD-MBA program at Kellogg and Northwestern’s School of Law. He has worked as a strategy consultant for technology start-ups and foreign energy companies at Tata and Accenture. On leave from Accenture in 2004, he served as a media strategist for the Democratic National Committee, co-drafting the national platform for that election year and writing media scripts and speeches for Bill Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards. Gupta has participated in community service with Journalists for Human Rights in Africa, in the fight against HIV/AIDS in India, and with displaced families in New Orleans. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Consistent with the guidelines of the scholarship, both winners plan careers in media management.

Says Crawford: “Being involved in digital media sets me on fire. My passion is to connect consumers with the entertainment experiences they want whenever and wherever. The digital world is shaking up traditional media business models, and I want to be a force of creativity and innovation that helps solve problems and looks to evolve new content monetization strategies.”

Gupta hopes to work in the strategy office of a major media company. He says: “Learning to cultivate and manage innovation through cutting edge courses at Kellogg, Medill and the law school gives me an academic grounding for my goal to lead a traditional media organization.”

This summer, Gupta will work for Sony Pictures’ studio in Los Angeles. There he will investigate strategy and acquisitions surrounding mobile content, such as made-for-mobile television shows and films.

Crawford will work for the Disney Internet Group as an international strategy and business development intern. In that role, she will evaluate opportunities, such as potential acquisitions, new businesses/products, new business models to extend the Disney brand experience to wireless and broadband consumers in India, China, Korea, Europe, and Japan.

They become only the third and fourth McCormick media management scholars at Kellogg. They will join 2007 scholars Maggie Hulce and Kailei Richardson as part of a media management scholars braintrust.

The Scholars Program was created by the McCormick Foundation in 2005 to cultivate a new generation of leaders in media management. The Foundation will grant 20 merit scholarships to Kellogg Media Management students and 60 merit scholarships to students in the Medill School over the course of 10 years.

More information about the McCormick Scholars Program can be found on the Kellogg web site here.