U.S. Headquarters: Dallas
Global Employees: 241,130
U.S. Employees: 231,706
Last Year’s DiversityInc Top 50 Ranking: No. 4

The use of diversity management to spur innovation at AT&T continues to accelerate. At DiversityInc’s Innovation Fest!, the company showcased its efforts to use technology to develop crowdsourcing for innovative ideas from its employee base, including a practical alert message to incoming calls/texts/emails to prevent people from texting or answering their phones while they are driving.

The company, which will be recognized on Oct. 16 as DiversityInc’s Top Company for Supplier Diversity, exceeded its goals for women- and minority-owned Tier 1 (prime) suppliers and integrates supplier diversity into every step of its contracting process.

Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson is a long-time diversity leader. He chairs the executive diversity council and is a visible community role model. This year, the survey also asked about community involvement of senior executives (top two levels), and AT&T excelled, with 41 percent of its senior leaders (top two levels) serving on many multicultural boards.

In the last two years, AT&T has beefed up its mentoring program, with more than half of the pairings now cross-cultural. The groups are available to all employees, including hourly workers. AT&T also holds an annual summit for resource-group leaders, attended by most of its senior executives, including Stephenson.