AT&T has donated at least $45,000 since 2017 to DeSantis and eight of the state senators advocating for Senate Bill 90. During the past year, AT&T has publicly championed voting rights. For example, the 2020 election was the first time the company ever used the AT&T Center in Texas for voting. AT&T also co-hosted a free “mega” drive-thro…
AT&T has donated at least $45,000 since 2017 to DeSantis and eight of the state senators advocating for Senate Bill 90. During the past year, AT&T has publicly championed voting rights. For example, the 2020 election was the first time the company ever used the AT&T Center in Texas for voting. AT&T also co-hosted a free “mega” drive-through voter registration event and even sold T-shirts that said “VOTE." Additionally, AT&T is a member of the Business Roundtable, which issued this statement in July 2020 in support of voting alternatives such as mail-in voting and absentee ballot voting:
Voting is a democratic principle that equally values the voice of every citizen. For so many Americans, voting was a hard-fought right. All Americans who qualify should be able to exercise this right free from unnecessary hurdles.
“Black lives matter and we have a moral and business obligation to engage on this fundamental issue of equality and fairness,” AT&T’s website reads. The company writes that one way it plans to drive change is through “advocat[ing] for systemic change” and “push[ing] for public policy changes to deliver equal justice outcomes for all.” Experts note that anti-voting bills such as Senate Bill 90 disproportionately hurt Black and immigrant voters. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
How do you square this with AT&T Chair's Bill Kennard interview with Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt at Fortune
Bill Kennard’s rise to chairman of AT&T earlier this year is an important milestone in many respects. He is the only black man serving as independent chair of a Fortune 500 company. He replaced Randall Stevenson, who held both the chairman and the CEO jobs, marking a move to better governance practices for the telecommunications giant. And he is a former commissioner of the FCC, giving him the perfect background to help forge a much-needed public-private partnership to ensure that every American, in his words, has “access to broadband as a fundamental necessity.” After last year, anything less is indefensible.
Kennard was Ellen McGirt’s and my guest on the podcast Leadership Next this week. I asked him what were at the top of his list of board concerns these days, and he crisply summarized the two big challenges that every business leader is wrestling with:
First: “AT&T has to continue to innovate and disrupt itself. We have to figure out in a sense what is the pace you cannibalize yourself. There is a lot of attention in the business headlines these days about how the Silicon Valley giants are disrupting legacy businesses. There is not as much attention being paid to how legacy businesses have to disrupt themselves.”
Second: “The board at AT&T, like all boards today, is focused on the role of corporations in society. Increasingly you are seeing corporations step into the vacuum where government leadership has sometimes failed or just can’t get the job done, and you are seeing corporations stepping up…Corporations are increasingly questioning, what is their role in society? How do corporations help solve the challenges of income inequality and racial inequality in the country, and political instability? These are questions that corporations have to address in order to be successful in society.”
AT&T has donated at least $45,000 since 2017 to DeSantis and eight of the state senators advocating for Senate Bill 90. During the past year, AT&T has publicly championed voting rights. For example, the 2020 election was the first time the company ever used the AT&T Center in Texas for voting. AT&T also co-hosted a free “mega” drive-through voter registration event and even sold T-shirts that said “VOTE." Additionally, AT&T is a member of the Business Roundtable, which issued this statement in July 2020 in support of voting alternatives such as mail-in voting and absentee ballot voting:
Voting is a democratic principle that equally values the voice of every citizen. For so many Americans, voting was a hard-fought right. All Americans who qualify should be able to exercise this right free from unnecessary hurdles.
“Black lives matter and we have a moral and business obligation to engage on this fundamental issue of equality and fairness,” AT&T’s website reads. The company writes that one way it plans to drive change is through “advocat[ing] for systemic change” and “push[ing] for public policy changes to deliver equal justice outcomes for all.” Experts note that anti-voting bills such as Senate Bill 90 disproportionately hurt Black and immigrant voters. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
How do you square this with AT&T Chair's Bill Kennard interview with Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt at Fortune
Bill Kennard’s rise to chairman of AT&T earlier this year is an important milestone in many respects. He is the only black man serving as independent chair of a Fortune 500 company. He replaced Randall Stevenson, who held both the chairman and the CEO jobs, marking a move to better governance practices for the telecommunications giant. And he is a former commissioner of the FCC, giving him the perfect background to help forge a much-needed public-private partnership to ensure that every American, in his words, has “access to broadband as a fundamental necessity.” After last year, anything less is indefensible.
Kennard was Ellen McGirt’s and my guest on the podcast Leadership Next this week. I asked him what were at the top of his list of board concerns these days, and he crisply summarized the two big challenges that every business leader is wrestling with:
First: “AT&T has to continue to innovate and disrupt itself. We have to figure out in a sense what is the pace you cannibalize yourself. There is a lot of attention in the business headlines these days about how the Silicon Valley giants are disrupting legacy businesses. There is not as much attention being paid to how legacy businesses have to disrupt themselves.”
Second: “The board at AT&T, like all boards today, is focused on the role of corporations in society. Increasingly you are seeing corporations step into the vacuum where government leadership has sometimes failed or just can’t get the job done, and you are seeing corporations stepping up…Corporations are increasingly questioning, what is their role in society? How do corporations help solve the challenges of income inequality and racial inequality in the country, and political instability? These are questions that corporations have to address in order to be successful in society.”
Judd-- ask for your own interview.