Hestia Lei
Lei focuses on enhancing the customer experience for AT&T U-verse subs and offering member perks by leveraging TV content partnerships and creating campaigns surrounding TVE, kids and holiday programming and other tentpole events. In 2014, she was one of only 30 AT&T leaders selected for the year-long intensive General Managers’ Accelerated Development Program, which advances execs’ business acumen and strategic vision. “I was able to expand my internal network with my peers and gain new insight into the world of capital funding outside of my day-to-day world of consumer marketing,” she says. “It was an invaluable and humbling learning experience.”
How do you define diversity?
To me, diversity means embracing people with different backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, lifestyles, abilities, and experiences. Diversity is a business imperative because working together and valuing differences that expand our thinking leads to better solutions. In order to remain relevant – to our customers and our employees – we must reflect the diversity of the communities we serve. To that end, [at Time Warner Cable] we do continue to expand the list of groups that we work to nurture, such as veterans and the long-term unemployed.
How can cable better support diversity?
When I see the recent news coverage about technology companies that have not been attentive to diversity, I’m proud to be in a tech company that is out in front, realizing the benefits of a diverse workforce.
There are lots of ways the cable industry can continue to lead the way in the area of inclusiveness, and TWC is working hard across all these fronts:
• Growing diverse programming and services
• Increasing diversity in our supply chain
• Improving sourcing, recruiting, and internal development of diverse talent
• Fostering grassroots Employee Networks – we currently have more than 25 active chapters across the TWC footprint.
What’s been the biggest story in cable this year?
It’s easy to leap to the headline-grabbing M&A deals as the big stories in cable, but I think the bigger story, of which M&A is only a part, has been the renewed and intense focus by the industry on delivering a great experience to our customers. The media likes to take shots at our industry for periodic missteps, but there is actually so much more going on in our efforts to enhance the customer experience. For example, at TWC we are making major investments in delivering greater reliability along with faster Internet speeds. We’re also setting new records for being on-time for our service appointments…and that’s with industry leading one-hour appointment windows. Cable consolidation is certainly a part of the picture, but the real story is that we as an industry are making major strides in delivering more to customers.
