Gearing up Girls for Careers in STEM

By: Laquita Hall, Vice President of Business Operations, AT&T Technology and Network Operations

I have spent over twenty years using my background in physics and electrical engineering working at AT&T. I spend a lot of my free time thinking about how we can get more women in this field, and it starts with a focus on young girls. We stand to benefit substantially by getting more girls to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). 

Starting to focus early on getting young women to explore their interests in the STEM fields can put them on the track for lifelong success. We must start as early as fifth grade. Cultivating their math and science skills—encouraging them to hang in there because they are fully capable to succeed in STEM.  It’s essential that they realize this is exciting!!!  Organizations such as Spark 101 help to bring these stories about real life careers into classrooms.  I was excited to be part of one of these videos recently because I want people everywhere, and especially girls, to know that technology can be awesome!

As the Vice President of Business Operations at AT&T, I have one of the coolest jobs in the country, working with people across the company who are innovative, creative, talented and smart to help develop products and solutions for the over 107 million customers who rely on our services every day. We use advances in technology, like the “On the Spot” app highlighted in the video, to improve the customer experience and keep them invested in using AT&T products. And we get to test out those many products to discover which ones work best and which ones will make the interaction with the customer the greatest yet.

Science and technology are and will continue to be important factors in what we are able to accomplish in our lifetimes.  And I hope girls who have an interest and passion in these fields will be encouraged to follow it. A great way to help make that happen is to become a mentor. Through AT&T's Aspire Mentoring Academy, we hope to help fill the mentoring gap by providing opportunities for employees to share career advice, skills and knowledge with teens that need it most. I encourage all of my fellow employees in these fields to get engaged with a young person and help show them how fun and exciting STEM can be! Who knows, we may just be building our future innovators in technology!