Alan Lui

This year Lui was appointed to lead all of TWC’s HR functions. His team is paving the way to help the company’s 50,000-plus employees merge effortlessly into the Comcast family. “We’re looking for attributes that are hard to teach, like integrity, initiative, and teamwork, to name just a few,” he says. “We want to hire folks who are a good fit for our culture for the long haul; we’d love it if every new employee we hired stayed on to build a successful career here, all the way to retirement.”

What’s the definition of diversity in 2014, and how can the cable industry do better in the area of inclusiveness?

I don’t think the definition of diversity has changed – it continues to mean embracing people with different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, lifestyles, abilities, and experiences who, together, produce better solutions.  What’s changing for the better is the growing recognition of diversity as a business imperative. In order to remain relevant – to our customers and our employees – we must reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.

What qualities do you look for when making a new hire?

Of course we look for candidates with the aptitude to do the job, but we have great training programs that can teach a lot of those skills. More importantly, we’re looking for attributes that are hard to teach, like integrity, initiative, and teamwork, to name just a few. We want to hire folks who are a good fit for our culture for the long haul; we’d love it if every new employee we hired stayed on to build a successful career here, all the way to retirement.

Name one emerging trend in cable we should all have our eyes on.

I think we are on the front edge of a trend toward a real transformation of the user experience. I can remember when people use to joke about needing an engineering degree to program your VCR. Today, due to the advances to our network and set-top box navigation systems, setting a DVR recording has become almost effortless and it’s much simpler to find what you want to watch; we’re improving our VOD infrastructure and content libraries so people can more easily watch their shows on their schedule; and TWC continues to lead the industry in enabling more and more consumer devices for watching live television–in- and out-of-the-home.