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Aaron Sanchez T-Mobile Talking With Trailblazers

Claudia Gordon T-Mobile Senior Accessibility Partner

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Chef Aarón Sánchez: “Our Time Has Come”

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Award-winning chef, author and philanthropist Aarón Sánchez was the guest star for T-Mobile’s special Hispanic Heritage Month edition of its ongoing Talking with Trailblazers series, dishing about his cooking career, preserving his family legacy through food and planting seeds for the next generation of Latino chefs.

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Aarón Sánchez can whip up a joke about his Latino heritage as masterfully as he does one of his famed dishes.

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“Talking about how we live as Latinos,” the chef said, before delivering a punchline like a well-seasoned comedian: “I live with my 63-year-old uncle who does the laundry with Suavitel. We clean our floor with Fabuloso. You know what I mean?”

While the laughs in the room proved the audience appreciated Sánchez’s penchant for the lighthearted, when it comes to the importance of preserving his family’s legacy through food, and inspiring and supporting young Latino talent in the culinary world, he turns to the serious and the heartfelt.

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“One of the things I get really charged about is our youth,” he said. “They are our most valuable commodity. How we treat our youth and how we influence them is so important. This industry has given me so much, I felt I had to give back.”

The award-winning chef, author and philanthropist was a guest speaker for T-Mobile’s most recent Talking with Trailblazers event, hosted by Jorge Martel, the company’s Vice President & General Manager, Puerto Rico, in front of fifty employees at its signature store in Miami.

Talking with Trailblazers invites diverse speakers on a number of culturally significant topics to inspire, educate and share, and this particular event was a special celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Throughout the month (Sept. 15 to Oct. 15), T-Mobile employees are able to donate to the <a href="https://un-carrier.benevity.org/campaigns/353">Hispanic Scholarship Fund</a> and get a 2:1 employee match, thanks to the T-Mobile Foundation. The event also encouraged any of the 1,800 remote viewers to join its Magenta Latinx Network employee resource group, which is already 3,500 members strong.

Sánchez discussed his cooking career as the current chef/owner of <a href="https://www.johnnysancheznola.com/">Johnny Sánchez</a> in New Orleans, a judge on FOX’s hit culinary competition series <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterChef_(American_TV_series)">MasterChef</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterChef_Junior">MasterChef Junior</a>, and an author of two cookbooks, La Comida del Barrio and Simple Food, Big Flavor, as well as a memoir, Where I Come From: Life Lessons From a Latino Chef.

He also discussed how he is supporting other Latino chefs as the partner/creative director of <a href="https://www.chefaaronsanchez.com/cocina">Cocina</a>, the first online content platform dedicated to celebrating the Latin lifestyle through its vibrant culinary culture.

“I think we're living in a really exciting time where second generation Latinos especially are trying to get back to roots and I think it's real exciting,” he said. “And I think technology helps do that. Whether you’re capturing ingredients at a farmer’s market, whether you’re interviewing your abuela and having her tell you about her stories and her upbringing — that’s how you use the technology. That’s really powerful, I think.”

Sánchez also acknowledged how technology during this particular time has helped fuel people’s curiosity of what’s beyond the home environment, where many were isolated during the pandemic, and that’s in turn created a space for Latinos to do more research into their own heritage through home-cooked meals.

“People’s knowledge of the food has grown so much,” he explained. “And the pandemic has helped with that, actually. I think people have cooked a lot more at home. I think people are researching their food more. They're using the technology from T-Mobile. We were already in the foodie era, now I think we just got more food-ier. I think it's exciting time for the home cook.”

And an exciting time for those looking to become professional chefs, too, which is the idea behind the <a href="https://www.aaronsanchezscholarshipfund.com/">Aarón Sánchez Scholarship Fund (ASSF),</a> an initiative empowering aspiring chefs from the Latin community. ASSF provides recipients with full culinary scholarships to the International Culinary Center (ICC) in New York City and ongoing mentorship.

“I know it’s important to give back,” he said, citing his own mentors over the years, like chefs Douglas Rodriguez, Paul Prudhomme, Jonathan Waxman — and most of all, his mother, a chef who risked it all to follow her culinary dreams in New York City and sparked his initial interest in cuisine. “My industry has afforded me a beautiful life, and I would never imagine the things that I've seen and done. So, in order for me to do that, I have to thank my mentors and I have to make sure that I’m planting seeds for the next generation.”

Sánchez says his journey hasn’t been an easy road to success, but he acknowledges those who helped him, while also recognizing the unfair obstacles that he can now help remove for those next in line.

“It’s just this really exciting time right now,” he said optimistically. “Because when I started 25 years ago, I felt there was a huge discrepancy between Latinos getting executive positions in kitchens. We were dishwashers, we were prep people. We never got those big jobs. Our time has come.”

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Have room for seconds? Well, you’re in luck! Also in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, check out this story about a cookbook of recipes from employees from T‑Mobile’s Consumer Group team: <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/community/hispanic-heritage-month-food-is-our-love-language">“Food Is Our Love Language.”</a>

Award-winning chef, author and philanthropist Aarón Sánchez was the guest on T-Mobile’s Hispanic Heritage Month edition of Talking with Trailblazers.

Chef Aarón Sánchez: “Our Time Has Come” | T-Mobile Newsroom

Shawna Ryan

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In one of the most diverse school districts in the country, T-Mobile partnered with school and city officials in Oakland to help close the Homework Gap.

Friday, March 13, 2020: The President of the United States declares a national emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak. That same afternoon, the superintendent of Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) in Oakland, Calif., declares that, starting the following Monday, OUSD’s 80 K-12 schools would cease in-person classes. The district’s 35,000 students would shift to distance learning through online classes and homework for at least the next month. And so began the most profound logistical challenge that Oakland school administrators had ever confronted.

In this city of 425,000 in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area, simply messaging the shift to families was complicated. With minority enrollment at 89% of the total student population, and Latinos accounting for 44%, Oakland USD is by far one of the most diverse school districts in America. Throughout the district, about 11,000 students, or 30%, are learning English for the first time. Half of all students speak one of more than 50 different languages at home.

In this city of 425,000 in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay Area, simply messaging the shift to families was complicated. With minority enrollment at 89% of the total student population, and Latinos accounting for 44%, Oakland USD is by far one of the most diverse school districts in America. Throughout the district, about 11,000 students, or 30%, are learning English for the first time. Half of all students speak one of more than 50 different languages at home.

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But communication wasn’t the only hurdle. At the time, says Susan Beltz, chief technology officer of OUSD, only 12% of Oakland’s 35,000 low-income students had a home internet connection.

Even among those who had the hardware, most still lacked the service to get online, leaving a huge disparity between those prepared with the tools for distance learning and those without. That disparity is an ongoing issue known as the Digital Divide — or in the context of school, the Homework Gap — and it plagues not only OUSD but school districts across the country. For Oakland schools and students, shifting to online-only classes was not as simple as just getting on Zoom. “The logistics were mind-boggling,” Beltz said.

She and Ali Medina, executive director of the Oakland Public Education Fund, charged ahead. They partnered with administrators across the district, plus officials from the City of Oakland. They all had the pandemic-incited emergency in mind, but they also saw the bigger picture. “We came together to say there's this huge need, and it’s essentially the issue of this generation and it's got to get solved,” Medina says. “We were all truly answering a call, and that includes T-Mobile, to do what's right. We have this technology, and we're going to get it into the hands of kids that need it.”

Recognizing that the problem is bigger than government or nonprofit agencies can address alone, T-Mobile has devoted immense resources to bridging the Digital Divide for years — and, with its Project 10Million, the Homework Gap. Announced in 2019 and launched the following year, T-Mobile’s Project 10Million has been providing schools with connectivity solutions for a year, and prior to that with its smaller-scale EmpowerED campaign, so the company already had a relationship with Oakland USD and the Oakland Public Education Fund, the nonprofit that fundraises and serves as a fiscal sponsor for OUSD.

But COVID upped the urgency. The key to bridging Oakland’s Homework Gap would be to scale up — and to do it faster than anyone imagined possible. An early donation from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to what became known as the #OaklandUndivided campaign paid for thousands of new tablets and laptops for students. But there was no service for the devices. “And here came T-Mobile like a knight in shining armor,” Medina said with a laugh.

T-Mobile and OUSD’s partnership had begun on a much smaller scale. In this new scenario, every aspect expanded. Beltz and Medina convened weekly meetings between district administrators, city officials and T-Mobile staff. Day after day, week after week, they stayed in touch with dozens of staffers in disparate organizations and departments.

“We were having these recurring conversations about, you know, when are the hotspots coming in? And when they arrive do you want us to install the SIM cards or do you want to do it? And how are we tracking all this stuff and how do we know when a line should be shut down because the device got lost and there's no longer any usage?” said Beltz. “It was a lot of in-depth work to make sure that these devices were going out to kids and being used by kids and were well supported, and being replaced and reissued when they needed to be. The vendor partnership with T-Mobile has been amazing because once the contract was signed it wasn’t just like, ‘OK, we’re going to ship a bunch of devices and we’re off to our next customer!’”

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Together, #OaklandUndivided procured and distributed tens of thousands of wireless devices, including hotspots, tablet and laptops, plus service plans to get them all up and running in classrooms and private homes across Oakland. It took months, even at warp speed. And the partnership has not only weathered a year of remote learning, it’s ongoing in the new school year. Now almost every student in the district can get online — Beltz and Medina say that Project 10Million has helped improve the connectivity rate from 12% to 98%. But the challenge is never ending.

“There's always that next student that just moved to Oakland and is enrolling,” Beltz says. “And even if they're attending school in person, you still want to make sure that the Homework Gap and the Digital Divide continue to be solved."

“I’ve spent my entire career in tech,” she continues, “and the term ‘Digital Divide’ has existed since the ‘90s. The fact that it has such tremendous urgency in 2021 shows where things are and this tremendous opportunity gap between people who have connectivity and devices and people who don’t. I think there’s real recognition on the part of education leaders and city leaders to say, ‘This is not acceptable for our kids.’”

With Project 10Million running full steam ahead in Oakland (and with T-Mobile already connecting a total of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/community/ceo-mike-sievert-project-10million" target="_blank">3 million students</a> across the U.S.)

Medina is especially excited about continuing this work during Hispanic Heritage Month. She emphasizes her own Latina heritage to make a crucial point. “Project 10Million did a huge service for our students of color,” she says. “The pandemic exacerbated the problems that exist because of the difference between the haves and the have-nots. But what it really did was prompt all of us to dig deep and say, ‘We’re going to serve low-income students and students of color who are low income to make sure that they have equal access and equity in the educational space. It was a major step forward, a shot across the bow, that ‘we’re going to take equity and turn it around. We’re not going to let this disparity continue to separate kids and their ability to learn. Because that’s the way you have economic mobility and success in the world in which we live. We want everybody to have equal access to opportunities.”

To learn more about T-Mobile’s Project 10Million or to register your school district for the program, visit <a href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.t-mobile.com%2Fp10m&data=04%7C01%7CLisa.Belot%40t-mobile.com%7Ca44babf753534129bef308d97c710934%7Cbe0f980bdd994b19bd7bbc71a09b026c%7C0%7C0%7C637677647195659135%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=c6SbL%2BqVNdQtJN6IsK%2FdIPFNaCWstuA0cCrZqOJ8VBk%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.t-mobile.com/p10m</a>. If you’re the parent or guardian of an eligible student, you can register at <a href="http://www.t-mobile.com/project10million" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.t-mobile.com/project10million.</a>

As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close, T-Mobile is spotlighting the Oakland Unified School District and the partnerships – including Project 10Million – they’ve engaged to get their largely Hispanic student population connected.

A Big Step Across the Digital Divide: T-Mobile’s Project 10Million Connects 35,000 Oakland Students | T-Mobile Newsroom

A Big Step Across the Digital Divide: T-Mobile’s Project 10Million Connects 35,000 Oakland Students

Jess Dillon

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T-Mobile’s Project 10Million Connects 35,000 Oakland Students

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Here at T-Mobile, the idea of “caring for our customers” is woven into the very fabric of the company, from our mission statement to our values to our actions. This last year alone was filled with a number of company-wide milestones that made us proud! We were recognized as #5 in Top Employers’ Response to the Pandemic by Forbes and JUST Capital, received a 100% score in the Disability Equality Index and made $100 million in direct and in-kind donations to support local communities — just to name a few. Though we are excited about these achievements, we realize that a <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/responsibility">company's work is never done</a>, and we're just getting started in our goal of contributing to a better tomorrow.

With such a <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/category/community">wide variety of issues</a> that matter to us, it can be difficult to properly share a comprehensive view of our charitable causes. However, as published in our <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/responsibility/2020-corporate-responsibility-report">most recent Corporate Responsibility Report</a>, our primary focus has been on three important areas: bridging the digital divide, diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) and contributing to a thriving planet.

We designed this quiz to see if we’re contributing to a cause that matters to you. It’s a day in the life adventure where the seemingly simple choices you make as you navigate an otherwise unassuming rainy day can reveal so much!

We’ll catch up with you at the end, where you’ll be awarded a special charitable title and learn a bit more information about our companywide efforts along the way!

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Choosing where to put your philanthropic efforts can be difficult when there are so many important causes out there that need our help! Walk through this “day in the life” quiz, and we bet we can guess the charitable cause that matters most to you. (It’s undoubtedly near and dear to T-Mobile’s magenta heart, too!)

Quiz: What Type of Conscious Consumer Are You? Let Us Guess! | T-Mobile Newsroom

Quiz: What Type of Conscious Consumer Are You? Let Us Guess!

Liz Habersham

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As a CX team, one core trait infuses everything we do. 

This is Customer Service Appreciation Week, when we recognize T-Mobile’s amazing frontline employees and the passion they put into their work every single day. The theme for this year is “The Heart of Service,” which speaks directly to the resilience and love my Care and Digital team members, along with our partners in Retail and Network Engineering, show our customers through every interaction.

There’s no other word for it: This team is the heart of T-Mobile, and I’d like to give you a few specific examples that illustrate my point.

First is T.J. Fountain, a care manager for small- and medium-sized businesses who works in our Las Vegas Customer Experience Center. T.J. is something like a small-business whisperer: As a department manager, he oversees a team of four coaches, three leads and 40 Dedicated Experts, encouraging them to work closely with their customers and Sales partners all over the Western U.S. and to invest in their success.

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Every business, he says, builds a trusted family over time. Not just loyal employees, but the tax attorney, the accountant, the vendors and other close allies they bring into the fold and rely on to help their business grow. T.J. and his Experts aspire to be a valued member of that family.

It’s a big responsibility, and it entails soaring above and beyond. T.J. and his team immerse themselves into industries as varied as transportation, healthcare, baking — you name it — to better understand the technology that’s best for each. They read trade journals, talk to peers in other industries, and develop a genuine curiosity and competency for their customers’ fields.

With this practical knowledge, T.J. and his team deploy their emotional intelligence. They offer business guidance with positivity, empathy and tact. After all, T.J. says, it’s called customer care for a reason: You have to care about customers. The result is what T.J. describes as a “professional concierge service for wireless.” Whether you need the latest tech or a sympathetic ear, his team has your back. This might include proactively checking in on the health of a customer’s business to ensure everything is running as smoothly as possible. Or helping a stranded customer connect with a retail store and replace a faulty device. Either way, it’s an all-in approach that stems from what T.J. calls an “attitude of servitude,” a phrase he learned at his first frontline Expert job back in 2018. I call it heart.

This drive to understand customer needs doesn’t stop at Care. Maddie Bach is a senior manager on the Digital Business team for emerging products. Based in Seattle, she’s a seven-year veteran of the digital side of T-Mobile Customer Experience. She and her team are focused on delivering T-Mobile Home Internet to existing and prospective customers. And to do that, she flexes remarkable left- and right-brain prowess.

Maddie starts by putting herself in the customer’s shoes. Which, as she points out, is easy because we’re all customers to someone. We all know how we want to be treated. We want long-term relationships, not anonymous transactions. Or we want total ease of use on our own terms.

Maddie’s group works closely with the Care and User Experience teams, poring over customer reports and results. This cross-team collaboration enables her to better grasp customer behaviors and expectations. How did they arrive at our website? Which page did they land on, and which page did they leave from? Where can we improve? The findings, she says, tell a story of customer behavior if you know how to read them.

Home Internet is a new product for us, so her team’s work is crucial in helping us learn what customers want and need with this service. For instance, new Home Internet customers recently asked for help setting up their service. In response, Maddie and her colleagues in Care, Digital and Retention developed an online hub that provides all the info they need to ensure a smooth and easy setup.

For James Holt, an elite Expert in account care who is based in Maine, improving people’s lives is the key to superlative customer service.

As a self-described “people pleaser,” James finds genuine fulfillment from his approach to care. He uses intentional phrases, questions and pauses that help put customers at ease and in the driver’s seat. With every call, James gives customers the tools to reach a resolution that they believe will genuinely improve their lives. And on the flip side, James is empowered to do whatever he can to help customers stay with us.

There’s a reason that James last year won the Kathy Woods Award, which singles out the top performer in Care. James intuitively grasps the fundamentals of customer psychology, and he uses them to help his customers feel heard and understood.

For example, he worked closely with a customer who had lost her job due to the pandemic and couldn’t pay her bill. James set her up on a special payment plan and then kept in close contact with her to follow her progress. She found a new job but needed extra time to stabilize her monthly budget, so James helped her get on our Hardship Payment Program. Again, he stayed in touch to provide the support, moral or otherwise, she might need. Now her account is in good standing, and she’s remained a loyal — and grateful — T-Mobile customer.

I hear stories like these and know that rather than feeling sold to, customers feel taken care of. They feel loved. And in return they love us back.

Our Un-carrier idea of serving customers is not a matter of numbers or statistics. It’s not a matter of sticking to a script or dodging responsibility. Caring for and serving customers is a matter of ownership, of pride, of connection. It’s a matter of heart. And that’s something we can all appreciate.

T-Mobile's Un-carrier idea of serving customers is not a matter of numbers or statistics. It’s a matter of heart. And that’s something we can all appreciate.

The Heart of the Matter | T-Mobile Newsroom

The Heart of the Matter

Jocelyn Jacobson

T-Mobile&#039;s Un-carrier idea of serving customers is not a matter of numbers or statistics. It’s a matter of heart. And that’s something we can all appreciate.

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T-Mobile’s new Senior Accessibility Partner has worked with a number of government institutions and even the White House itself to elevate the standards of access and inclusion. She speaks with us about both her impressive resume and the memories as a little girl that motivated her to work in social justice.

Claudia Gordon is a lot of things. It’s hard to wrap your mind around it when you see it on paper.

She'll tell you she's the first Black, deaf woman attorney in the United States. Former staff attorney of nonprofit <a href="https://www.nad.org/about-us/law-advocacy-center/">National Association of the Deaf Law and Advocacy Center</a>. Member of <a href="https://www.nbda.org/">National Black Deaf Advocates</a>. A Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties alumna. A disaster recovery representative on the ground in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. An 8-year member of the Obama administration’s Department of Labor and former disability liaison at White House. A <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/claudia_gordon_owning_otherness">Ted Talk</a> presenter.

But when you ask her about this, Claudia glosses over titles and organizations with such ease, to efficiently get to what the point behind all that was for her. Each title, each promotion, each department change had a very specific purpose behind it. She wanted to provide legal representation and help break down communication barriers for individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind. She wanted to advocate directly with Congress and federal agencies to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act. She wanted to ensure that while we were applying new security measures to protect our nation, we weren’t diminishing the rights and protections of those with disabilities. She wanted to strengthen <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/section-503#:~:text=Section%20503%20of%20the%20Rehabilitation,promote%2C%20and%20retain%20these%20individuals.">Section 503 of the Rehab Act,</a> which prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against individuals with disabilities and requires employers take affirmative action to recruit, hire, promote and retain such individuals.

Don’t get lost in the titles or the organization names. What Claudia Gordon wants you to know is simple: “My goal was to contribute toward inclusivity and accessibility and work for a more just and equitable world.”

Now leading the charge at T-Mobile as senior partner within the company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team, she is excited to once again go beyond titles and find the purpose in her work: To pursue the integration of disability and inclusion access within the company’s overarching DE&I prioritization efforts and initiatives.

As the company celebrates being named a 2021 Leading Disability Employer by the <a href="https://www.nod.org/">National Organization on Disability</a> and receiving a 100% score on Disability:IN’s <a href="https://disabilityin.org/what-we-do/disability-equality-index/2020companies/">Disability Equality Index</a> for five years in a row, Claudia makes it clear that awards never mark the end of the work that still needs to happen.

“We continue to receive recognition for our efforts in disability employment, accessibility and inclusion,” she says, “but I don’t think we can just hold ourselves out as worthy recipients. Accessibility and inclusion for those with disabilities is a journey where we will never arrive at an end point, or where we can just pat ourselves on the back and rest on our laurels. When we think about accessibility we ought to think about people … at the end of the day, it’s about our employees with disabilities, our customers with disabilities, our job applicants with disabilities who want to come and work with us. It’s about them. They want the same thing as everyone else, which is a world they can navigate without barriers.”

We sat down with Claudia, with the help of American Sign Language interpreters Tiffany Hill and Elise Mongeon, to discuss the motivation behind her work, the plans she has at T-Mobile and what it means to be one team together.

Where does the passion and motivation to become the first Black, deaf woman attorney in the U.S. come from, and how do you see that same motivation in the work you do today?

I was born and raised on the beautiful island of Jamaica. When I was 8 years old, I lost my ability to hear, and since then I’ve experienced multiple forms of marginalization, oppression and plain old exclusion. Those experiences motivated me to pursue a career in social justice from a very early age.

I moved to the United States when I was 11, where I was fortunate to receive an excellent education. In the following years I attended college and obtained a law degree from American University in Washington, DC. My goal was to contribute toward inclusivity and accessibility and work for a more just and equitable world.

I joined Sprint in 2017 and oversaw government compliance for the accessibility business unit, focusing on reducing barriers in communication-product services. In June, I accepted my new role as senior partner within the T-Mobile Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team, and I’m very excited to get going.

T-Mobile is different. We prioritize disability among those marginalized groups, and that’s one reason why we’ve been singled out for awards from disability advocacy groups year after year after year.

My job is to work with various stakeholders across the company, such as real estate, HR, recruitment, even IT, regarding digital space and product development. We’ll listen to these stakeholders to learn about their work and how we can incorporate disability-related considerations into what we do every day — and to determine where there’s room for improvement. Based on those gaps, we’ll develop collaborative strategies that will drive us to become a more equitable workplace for individuals with disabilities and create a more inclusive culture where everyone can thrive and bring their whole self to work.

You have worked for a number of reputable institutions and companies that put a lot of rigor behind the work of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. How would you describe the energy in the field at T-Mobile?

T-Mobile has already demonstrated that it’s a good place for people with disabilities to work in several ways. And the key is not simply hiring someone with disabilities for the sake of checking a box or to garner a particular percentage so the statistics look good. Inclusion transcends the presence of an individual to include people with disabilities so they genuinely feel like they belong in the workplace, like their experiences and voices are heard. That’s essential for real, meaningful inclusion, and I believe T-Mobile gets it. It’s important for a company to be vulnerable enough to admit there’s room for improvement.

Even before I came aboard, I’d seen impressive efforts in several areas. For example, the Accessibility Resource Center, or ARC, is a group working hard to remove digital barriers to access, and I’ve been impressed with the team’s technical expertise and their efforts to educate across the company and invest in training. It’s an effort that should be recognized all across the corporate world.

And the <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/careers/culture-and-benefits/diversity">Accessibility Community at T-Mobile, or ACT,</a> is an employee resource group that I believe is at 11,000 members and counting. That’s huge. They provide great resources for employees with disabilities.

Another example is this role I’ve been brought into. It shows that the voices and the hands of those with disabilities at T-Mobile matter. We are on a journey, and I feel like we have a seat at the table and our voices and our hands are being heard.

How would you describe the practical application of the work you’re doing, in a way that all employees can understand and see the value and benefit for the company as a whole?

My DE&I team partners with HR, which involves representation from many different stakeholders across the company. The goal is to identify pain points and barriers to access and work together to figure out solutions and mediation. Sometimes it’s as simple as learning a management system or platform that employees have to use. That shows a level of commitment to work towards actual goals, not just talking about them.

I encourage each of us, including myself as a person with a disability, to pause and think about how our behavior impacts others. With this mindset, we can prioritize access and inclusion in even the little things we do. Because it really matters. It’s not something we can just delegate to one person or one team. It’s us, one team together, to achieve a more inclusive and equitable workplace, that will make T-Mobile number one for this work.

T-Mobile is celebrating National Disability Employment Awareness Month throughout October. To learn more about the Un-carrier’s efforts to further Diversity, Equity and Inclusion every day, visit <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/celebrating-diversity">the T-Mobile website.</a>

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T-Mobile’s new Senior Accessibility Partner has worked with White House itself to elevate the standards of access and inclusion.

Disability Awareness Starts with All of Us — and Benefits All of Us | T-Mobile Newsroom

Disability Awareness Starts with All of Us — and Benefits All of Us

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A cookbook compiling recipes submitted by employees across T-Mobile’s Consumer Group team serves up a helping of Hispanic heritage with 50 Latino-inspired dishes.

They say food is love, and for the people behind the recipes featured in a cookbook that showcases the rich diversity of T-Mobile employees’ Latino culture, there’s no more authentic way to show love for their Hispanic heritage than through the dishes they grew up with.

“That’s one of the beautiful things about the Hispanic culture,” says Jeanette Rodriguez, a retail store manager in Orange County, California. “It really centralizes around making sure that you’ve eaten!”

And when members of the Consumer Group organization (previously known as Consumer Markets) decided it might be fun to put together a cookbook to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month last year, employees across the country made sure there would be enough recipes within to guarantee everyone gets seconds.

“Honestly, we were blown away by the interest and participation,” says Melinda Carter, a senior program manager based in Overland Park, Kansas. “We thought if we could get twenty to twenty-five good recipes and stories with no duplicates, that would be a success. But these amazing recipes, stories and photos kept rolling in. Not only did we have responses from all over the country, but the recipes submitted came from a range of job roles and a blend of our different distribution and retail channels.”

With over 100,000 members, T-Mobile’s Consumer Group encompasses all consumer strategy, marketing and operations teams alongside frontline field sales teams across the nation at more than 18,000 distribution points, including retail stores, for both T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile. T-Mobile recently released its <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/t-mobile/assets/pdf/T-Mobile_CSR20_10921.pdf" data-type="URL" data-id="https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/t-mobile/assets/pdf/T-Mobile_CSR20_10921.pdf">Corporate Responsibility Report</a> that showcases the company’s workforce diversity numbers, citing 60.1 percent of its employees identify as people of color and 27.6 percent as specifically identifying as Hispanic.

When it became clear the cookbook was a way employees wanted to celebrate the month together, organizers went big, and Consumer Group EVP Jon Freier approved funding to make it happen. It took months to choose from the submissions, before landing on fifty recipes that spanned as much of the Latin world as possible. That’s when they began working on producing something that not only showcased wonderful food to cook, but also takes the reader on a tour of Hispanic culture all over the world with deeply personal stories behind the delectable dishes.

A regional map in the opening pages starts the culinary learning-journey in Mexico, traveling through Central and South America, and then sailing the Caribbean to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and all the way east to Spain — denoting staples, flavors and ingredients that are significant or more plentiful to each region.

Each employee who submitted a recipe was gifted a hard copy of the cookbook, and a digital file was also shared for other employees to dig in and enjoy.

“There were so many recipes that honestly surprised me because many I had been eating since I was a little girl and I never knew where they came from,” says Jessica Rodriguez, a retail store manager in Virginia. “I just knew them as Spanish or Latino food, but to get to understand where they come from and the history and background was amazing. Just like I have my own culture from Guatemala, now I get to see that in all these other Latin countries.”

Jessica submitted her family’s tamales recipe because, as she says through a giggle, “it’s like Christmas in your mouth! It’s just amazing how the taste can bring back so many memories from your childhood.”

But all kidding aside, it’s the importance of the memories attached to that taste that easily brings tears she can’t possibly fight back when she talks about them.

“I remember being young and my father being there making the masa and my mother making the meat,” Jessica says. “Being together at that time was special because that’s when we were with my father who is no longer with us. The tamales were a way to bring us together, especially during the holiday season. It’s something I want to give to my kids and that I want them to then pass down.”

Jeanette decided to submit her mother’s pozole de pollo recipe, not only because it reminds her of the tastes of her family’s native Mexico and the ingredients she loved most as a child, but also because of what the dish represents to her family.

“For me the earliest memory I have of enjoying this dish is celebrating when my mother became a U.S. citizen,” Jeanette explains. “Every time I make pozole or if I smell it, it brings me back to that day and to that table as a little girl, looking across at my mom being so proud.”

She says she didn’t understand then about the struggle her mother went through to get here, but knowing now how important that moment was to her has made the dish a reminder of what her mother did for her and her three siblings: “It’s so beautiful to now see my kids and my mom cooking the same dishes together in the kitchen, so it really brings back great memories and I’m so happy that my kids get to experience this and make those memories as well with my mother.”

The project team says they felt a responsibility to showcase these memories in the manner they deserve, and it shows. Carol Franco, a senior program manager in the Consumer Group, and Amy Wilson, a digital designer, pored over one hundred and six pages with undeniable expert production value utilizing beautiful images and stories behind each recipe. There’s even a glossary of the regional ingredients that aren’t as common in the U.S.

“The hardest part was the hours of editing the team put into the project,” Melinda says. “Making sure all the measurements were consistent throughout each page, correcting grammar and spelling, ensuring consistent formatting. The most rewarding part of the project was hearing from those who submitted recipes upon receiving their hard-copy — I think the final product exceeded anyone’s expectations. It’s a true example of how we work and win together.”

And the timing only reinforced the importance of this project to celebrate something integral to all of these Hispanic dishes — the stories and the families behind them. Organizers began to curate the recipes at the height of the pandemic, when most families that traditionally cooked these dishes during the following holidays and shared them together at a table, were suddenly forced apart for safety.

To know that during this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month so many kitchens will be bustling once again, and the smells and tastes of these recipes rich with flavor and memories will be enjoyed, is something everyone involved appreciates more than ever.

“For us we really show a lot of love through food,” explains Jeanette. “That’s our love language.”

Hungry for more? Well, you’re in luck! Also in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, T-Mobile has welcomed <a href="https://www.chefaaronsanchez.com/">Aarón Sánchez</a>, award-winning chef, author and philanthropist as its latest guest-speaker for its internal <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/community/laverne-cox-talking-with-trailblazers-pride-2021">Talking with Trailblazers</a> series to discuss Aarón’s cooking career, his passion for preserving his family’s legacy through food, allyship and what he’s doing to support future Hispanic chefs and leaders. Look out for a recap of the event!

A cookbook of recipes submitted by employees across T-Mobile’s Consumer Group team serves up a helping of Hispanic heritage with 50 LatinX-inspired dishes.

Hispanic Heritage Month: “Food Is Our Love Language” | T-Mobile Newsroom

Hispanic Heritage Month: “Food Is Our Love Language”

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T-Mobile has committed $25M to small town grants over the next five years, starting with these 25 deserving communities across the country  

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BELLEVUE, Wash. — September 23, 2021 — These small towns have big plans. Today, T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) announced the 25 small towns winning Hometown Grants to jumpstart vital community development projects to re-energize these towns and build upon what makes them unique. Hometown Grants are part of the Un-carrier’s <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobiles-next-un-carrier-move-5gforall" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">massive commitment</a> to bring 5G to rural America.

Over the next five years, T-Mobile plans to hire 7,500 new employees in small towns and rural communities and provide $25 million in grants for community development projects. Earlier this month, the Un-carrier unveiled the FIRST <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/hometown-techover-winner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hometown Techover winner</a>, Woodstock, Ill. which will receive a prize package worth $3M and become the crown jewel of 5G for small towns across America. And today, 25 additional well-deserving small towns will snag a grant to improve their communities. Meet the winners and their projects:

“These incredible projects spark innovation, ingenuity and hard work that have always been the hallmark of our nation’s small towns,” said Jon Freier, Executive Vice President of Consumer Group at T-Mobile. “From beautifying historic Main Streets to building all-new retail spaces, pop-ups and parks … this is part of our commitment to rural America, and we can’t wait to see all these creative plans come to life.”

T-Mobile partnered with Main Street America and Smart Growth America, two consulting partners with a combined experience of more than 60 years working to help build stronger, more prosperous small towns and rural communities. Together, they determined the grant recipients based on detail and fullness of the submission, community impact, viability of the project among other factors. And this group is just the first — recipients are selected and awarded on a quarterly basis, so towns with populations less than 50,000 are eligible and encouraged to apply.

“We’re thrilled to work with T-Mobile and Smart Growth America to support these inspiring projects in rural communities across the country,” said Main Street America’s President and CEO Patrice Frey. “These grant recipients demonstrate the creativity and passion for place we’ve seen in Main Street communities for decades, and we're excited to see their projects take shape.”

"SGA is committed to the resilience of America's small towns, having worked in scores of towns and cities in rural places over the past 12 years,” said Smart Growth America’s President and CEO Calvin Gladney. “Each of the 25 towns selected to receive a T-Mobile grant demonstrated their imagination and commitment to a project that will enliven a sense of place and lift the lives of their citizens." 

Commitment to Rural America  T-Mobile Hometown Grants is just one of the many initiatives underscoring T-Mobile’s commitment to rural America. Beyond amazing deals on plans and new devices, the Un-carrier’s unleashed a new broadband service available to nearly 10 million rural households — T-Mobile Home Internet — and a commitment to build hundreds of new stores and create 7,500 new jobs supporting the wireless needs of communities across rural America. More than just bringing wireless, T-Mobile wants to be part of the community and help small towns thrive.

For full details on how to submit a proposal for Hometown Grants, visit <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/hometown-grants" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/hometown-grants</a>.

For more information about T-Mobile's commitment to small towns, visit <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/acrossamerica" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">T-Mobile.com/AcrossAmerica</a>.  Follow T-Mobile’s Official Twitter Newsroom <a href="https://www.twitter.com/tmobilenews" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@TMobileNews</a> to stay up to date with the latest company news.

About T-Mobile  T-Mobile U.S. Inc. (NASDAQ: TMUS) is America’s supercharged Un-carrier, delivering an advanced 4G LTE and transformative nationwide 5G network that will offer reliable connectivity for all. T-Mobile’s customers benefit from its unmatched combination of value and quality, unwavering obsession with offering them the best possible service experience and undisputable drive for disruption that creates competition and innovation in wireless and beyond. Based in Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile provides services through its subsidiaries and operates its flagship brands, T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile and Sprint. For more information please visit: <a href="https://www.t-mobile.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.t-mobile.com</a>.

About Main Street America Main Street America has been helping revitalize older and historic commercial districts for over 40 years. Today, it is a network of more than 1,200 neighborhoods and communities, rural and urban, who share both a commitment to place and to building stronger communities through preservation-based economic development Since 1980, communities participating in the program have leveraged more than $89.57 billion in new public and private investment, generated 687,321 net new jobs and 154,435 net new businesses, and rehabilitated more than 303,836 buildings. Main Street America is a program of the nonprofit National Main Street Center, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.mainstreet.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">www.mainstreet.org</a>.

About Smart Growth America  About Smart Growth America: Smart Growth America envisions a country where no matter where you live, or who you are, you can enjoy living in a place that is healthy, prosperous, and resilient. We empower communities through technical assistance, advocacy, and thought leadership to realize our vision of livable places, healthy people, and shared prosperity. <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsmartgrowthamerica.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7CDanielle.Babbington%40t-mobile.com%7Cae72700fa378494c6eda08d9673180a8%7Cbe0f980bdd994b19bd7bbc71a09b026c%7C0%7C0%7C637654284577859495%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=lKselvi3Dqq5pqueJNKiHxptFqpxyjbTxfBLZgh4mOA%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">https://smartgrowthamerica.org/</a>.

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T-Mobile has committed $25M to small town grants over the next five years, starting with these 25 deserving communities across the country

YOU Get a Grant and YOU Get a Grant - T-Mobile to Bolster 25 Small Towns Nationwide | T-Mobile Newsroom

YOU Get a Grant and YOU Get a Grant &#8211; T-Mobile to Bolster 25 Small Towns Nationwide

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Students are back in the classroom, but reliable mobile connectivity remains as critical as ever. T-Mobile is committed to ensuring no learner is left behind.

Last school year was anything but normal for America’s 56 million K through 12 students. You hear the word <meta charset="utf-8">“unprecedented<meta charset="utf-8">” quite a lot, and it really was. A lot of young students are used to structure and routine, and rely on tools at school that they might not be able to get at home like reliable internet connectivity. For those kids, school shutdowns across the country have had impacts that experts are still trying to fully understand.

This issue isn’t new — the pandemic just put a glaring spotlight on it. And while most students around the country have returned to in-person learning, the problem persists. While estimates on the number of students who lack reliable connectivity outside the classroom range greatly, what we know for sure is that this issue has affected millions — for many years. Education is meant to be the great leveler in our society, but in order for there to be more equal outcomes, there must be more equal access — and in this case, that means equal access to broadband connectivity even after students leave school for the day.

It’s why, even before the pandemic, T-Mobile saw the potential for taking the tremendous network capacity that our newly merged company would deliver and conceived a program that addresses this important Digital Divide issue, called the “Homework Gap,” at a size and scale that is truly historic. It is a program that, to our knowledge, is one of the largest and most ambitious programs ever launched by a non-governmental organization to get kids connected. Our $10.7 billion Project 10Million, officially launched in 2020, now offers free internet service and free mobile hotspots to under-connected households with school-aged children, aiming to reach up to 10 million eligible households over five years. The program offers school districts free and highly subsidized data plans that they can provide to their students for free.

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