The following article by Jason A. Llorenz, Esq., Executive Director of the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP), originally appeared on the HTTP blog.
Recently, HACR released its Corporate Inclusion Index (CII) which measures companies across sectors on the issue of diversity. AT&T. The company tied for first place and received a rating of 95 out of 100. NCLR President and CEO, Janet Murguia’s Huffington Post piece lauded AT&T’s ranking. This is significant – and no accident. Let’s be perfectly honest: Fortune 1000 Companies are not in the habit of merely falling into diversity best practices – instead, these inclusion efforts are often due to hard-earned effort by both internal and external leaders.
Keeping this in mind, the company should be lauded for exceeding expectations across hiring, supplier diversity, and internal supports for diverse talent, especially Latino employees. Diversity matters, and the business strategies of today’s industries matter – and so we congratulate AT&T while looking to others in the technology and telecommunications industry to do more and do better.
Diversity is neither easily attained, nor easily incorporated into a complex business, unless there is a true commitment to do so. In Silicon Valley, many have called for more and better efforts to hire minorities. Yet those companies continue to struggle to make that a reality. Short applicant pools mean fewer diverse candidates to hire. But once hired, the company’s internal supports for nurturing, training and mentoring talent must also be in place.
Of all the elements of diversity, supplier diversity is key – identifying and cultivating supplier relationships with minority-and women-owned, smaller businesses is one of the most powerful pathways to achieving economic parity, spreading the benefits of economic opportunity, and strengthening communities. AT&T spends billions of dollars with diverse small businesses. Smaller suppliers must be developed and mentored – sometimes even teamed with a larger supplier to be groomed for success. That entails investment of time and resources, and tolerance of risk on the part of a large company. Again, the long-term commitment to success is evident in the results, and the rankings.
What is most important about AT&T and other companies leading in the diversity space is that their actions do not exist in a vacuum – instead, it sends an important signal to leading firms that diversity needs to be included when developing their strategic priorities. Companies looking to include diversity best practices as part of their overarching structure should heed the example of the companies on HACR’s list.
One hopes that other companies in the tech sector will follow in the footsteps of AT&T in this manner, by making diversity a part of the culture and an everyday way of serving its customers. Incorporating diversity best practices will mean greater opportunity for communities, and a more competitive technology sector.
Congratulations AT&T!
Kurt Merriweather is the Director of Emerging Business Development at Discovery Communications. In this role, Merriweather is responsible for identifying and incubating opportunities that leverage new audiences, new products and new business models. Merriweather is currently forming a new organization within Discovery that will be dedicated to reaching the channel’s audiences across video, mobile and social media platforms. Prior to his current role, Merriweather worked as Discovery’s Director of Digital Media Business Development, as well as a business director for America Online and senior project manager for several companies.
Elijah Young is a serial entrepreneur who has had a hand in starting nearly twenty businesses since 2003. His most recent venture, 
Jose Mas (and his family) were our very first Multicultural Entrepreneurs of the Week when BBSJ was launched, and we believe he deserves the distinction again. Mas has been CEO of MasTec, a company that is building broadband and telecommunications infrastructure for the entire nation, since 2007. He is the latest in a line of Mas businessmen and women who have built the company from the ground-up into an employer over 10,000 people across the country. In the time since Mas has headed the company, its revenues have doubled and earnings have more than tripled. Last week, Mas was featured on the CBS reality show “Undercover Boss,” which follows senior executives as they work in disguise with lower levels of staff to learn about the inner workings of their companies and how they can improve upon them.
Apple computers and operating systems are widely considered safer and more secure than most other systems, an important factor for consumers in an age where hackers are running rampant online.
Unfortunately, Apple’s recent update to its latest operating system, the Mac OS X Lion, version 10.7.3,
included a security flaw that exposed passwords by storing them outside the encrypted area of users’ devices. When security researcher David Emery discovered the flaw last week, other experts provided tips for users to protect their data until Apple fixed the problem, including changing FileVault passwords and deleting the debug log file, named “/var/log/secure.log,” from the disk drive. Unfortunately, many consumers are simply not that tech-savvy, and they remained at risk until Apple released another update that addressed the problem.
