AT&T celebrates diversity in tech

AT&T celebrates diversity in tech
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On January 31st, 2017, AT&T leadership brought together movers and shakers from across the country to discuss fueling the diverse talent pipeline in STEM. At their flagship store in San Francisco, AT&T Chief Strategy Officer and Technology & Operations Group President John Donovan kicked off the evening, "I grew up with seven sisters, and three of them already had perfect SAT scores before I could take the test myself. I'm dedicated to partnering with organizations like Black Girls Code and Girls Who Code to encourage more women to enter STEM fields."

Mr Donovan called AT&T "a 132-year-old startup," and highlighted that diversity comes in many forms. "We've gone from needing 50% of our workforce to 95% of our workforce to be STEM educated. We can't hire so fast, so we learn fast and we transform our company with the people we already have. We have multi-ethnic and multi-generational employees, and we've together completed over two million Udacity courses," added Mr. Donovan who has been at AT&T for three decades.

(L-R) Nadia Morris, Charlene Lake, Reshma Saujani, John Donovan, Shannon Farley, Kimberly Bryant, Stuart Frye.

(L-R) Nadia Morris, Charlene Lake, Reshma Saujani, John Donovan, Shannon Farley, Kimberly Bryant, Stuart Frye.

Charu Sharma

Panelist and former Philosophy major Nadia Morris is a self-taught programmer and today heads Innovation at the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health. "At my radio station in college, I got access to a browser to do my job. I got to see the power of all computers connected to each other, and how that could bring people together. I was sold. Now I've taken it upon me to mentor younger women to be empower to enter STEM fields."

Melissa Arnoldi agreed, "I've found my purpose, now I have a huge responsibility to help women who will come after me. It's all about the next generation. I encourage my mentees to stretch themselves beyond their current job responsibilities and learn skills to prepare for the future." Melissa is the President of Technology Development at AT&T and was named among the top 50 most powerful women in tech in 2015.

Black Girls CODE Founder Kimberly Bryant is on a mission to teach programming to one million girls of color in the age bracket of 7-17 by 2040. Kimberly pointed out to the audience that it is important for the tech ecosystem to educate and attract young girls early on. "If you start teaching programming at the high school level, you've already lost them," says Bryant.

Girls Who Code CEO and panelist Reshma Saujani lost a race for congress in New York and saw the gender divide in leadership roles across sectors. She has since dedicated all her time scaling Girls Who Code to about 40,000 alums in all 50 states as of today. 50% of her 2012 cohort fell below the poverty line, and she has seen her graduates make $120k salaries at programming jobs and move their families from poverty to middle class. Saujani added that learning to code teaches girls to fail and be imperfect.

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