130 Years and Counting: AT&T's Commitment to Women
by Kathy McKim


On Sept. 1, 1878, Emma Nutt became the first female employee of the AT&T Bell System when she was hired as an operator in Boston.  Interestingly, the first operators for the company were actually teenage boys who turned out to be somewhat noisy and impatient with customers.

One fateful night, a manager “experimented” with Emma as an operator and the customer response was overwhelmingly positive. Within seven years, all of the telephone operators in Boston were women.  The trend soon went nationwide, and the women of AT&T began shaping the culture of the company.

In the years that followed, the women of AT&T were truly pioneers – breaking the barriers of all male-dominated jobs across the company, even climbing telephone poles and working on installations and repairs.  Today, women play integral roles in every part of the organization, from network technicians to business unit executives. 

Women make up more than 40 percent of AT&T’s management employees — above the average of most fortune 500 companies — and we make up 33 percentof the company’s board of directors. AT&T is committed to recruiting and hiring a diverse workforce and that commitment has earned the company top honors by DiversityInc, Fortune magazine, LATINA Style and others.

AT&T strives to be an employer of choice for women, and one of the ways we accomplish that is by offering a variety of professional development programs, including tuition reimbursement, AT&T’s Self Development and Assessment Resource Center for employees seeking mentoring support, and the Leadership Development Program (LDP) focused on building a strong and diverse leadership bench across the company.  Since 1988, hundreds of recently hired college graduates have successfully completed the LDP — nearly half of these employees are women; nearly half are people of color.

Several of AT&T’s employee resource groups also offer professional development opportunities, including AT&T’s women-focused employee group, the Women of AT&T.  First organized here in California in 1972 by 12 female employees, the group seeks to support each other in achieving their personal and professional goals, and to effect change in the community.  The Women of AT&T provides career advocacy and professional development opportunities through mentoring circles, scholarships, chapter meetings and national programs.

AT&T also supports programs that create opportunities for women outside of the company – such as major philanthropic support for girls’ education and women’s initiatives; community partnerships like our work with St. John’s Shelter in Sacramento to help improve the quality of life for homeless women with children; and a strong commitment to buying products and services from diverse suppliers, including women-owned businesses. In fact, we have been recognized by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council as one of the top corporations working to break down barriers that impede women’s business enterprises from gaining fair access to procurement opportunities.

I’m proud that AT&T fosters an inclusive culture that has encouraged hundreds of thousands of women to grow and thrive.  And I’m even more proud of the impact that women have had on the company, breaking through the “glass ceiling” to assure opportunity for all of us – leading innovative initiatives, developing new products and services, successfully managing large departments, and, most importantly, mentoring those who will help lead the company for the next 130 years.

Connections magazine welcomes our new contributor

Kathy McKim
AT&T California