STANKEY
John

• 1. Early life and education
• 2. Career

John T. Stankey is an American businessman currently serving as CEO of AT&T Inc. and as a member of AT&T Inc.’s board of directors. He previously served as AT&T’s president and COO and was former CEO of WarnerMedia. Stankey led AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV and Time Warner in 2015 and 2018, respectively. He assumed the CEO role of AT&T effective July 1, 2020, succeeding Randall L. Stephenson.

Early life and education

Stankey was raised in Los Angeles, the youngest of three children. His father was an insurance underwriter and his mother a housewife. In the 1980s, he graduated with a B.B.A. in Finance from Loyola Marymount University. In 1991, he earned an M.B.A. from UCLA.

Career

In 1985, Stankey took an entry-level position with Pacific Bell. which was acquired by SBC Communications in 1996. Stankey went on to serve as the Executive Vice President of Industry Markets beginning in 1998 becoming the Executive President of Industry Markets in 2000. In 2001 Stankey became the President and CEO for SBC Southwest. Stankey served as CIO of the "new AT&T" after the merger of SBC with AT&T Corporation finalized in 2005, becoming the senior executive vice president and CTO for AT&T from 2008 to 2012, Stankey held various senior executive positions within the company and in January 2012, Stankey became the CSO and group president of AT&T.

In 2015, Stankey became the CEO of AT&T Entertainment Group (AEG), taking control of the newly acquired DIRECTV business. Stankey then assumed control of the newly acquired Time Warner company (acquired by AT&T in 2018), which was quickly renamed WarnerMedia (WM). He earned $22.5 million from AT&T in 2019 and $21 million in 2020; in 2020 alone AT&T lost $5.4 billion and cut tens of thousands of jobs, while in the period between 2015 (when Stankey assumed control of DIRECTV and the AT&T Entertainment Group) and 2021 AT&T laid off over 50,000 workers in the USA.. In 2021 Stankey oversaw selling both DTV and WM at a substantial loss.

Stankey served on the board of directors for UPS from 2014 until 2020.

In 2018, Stankey was named CEO of WarnerMedia which owns various media and film corporations, including Warner Bros., HBO, Turner Broadcasting System, and CNN. Immediately upon assuming control Stankey drove out creative personnel and initiated regular layoffs among WM personnel.

On October 1, 2019, Stankey became the COO of AT&T while continuing to serve as the CEO of WarnerMedia.

On April 1, 2020, AT&T announced that Stankey would be stepping down as CEO of WarnerMedia. Former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar assumed the role effective May 1, 2020, reporting to Stankey. On July 1, 2020, Stankey replaced Randall L. Stephenson as CEO of AT&T Inc.

On April 30, 2021, AT&T announced that a nonbinding shareholder vote had rejected AT&T's executive compensation proposal by a slight majority. This was after several AT&T executives, including Stankey and Jason Kilar, gained significant stock awards in 2020 despite the Covid-19 pandemic, massive layoffs, poor service and subscriber results, continued subscriber losses, and middling stock returns. The vote represents an example of a recent trend of shareholders and the general public growing tired of the seemingly inexorable recent obscene growth in CEO pay despite clear and obvious mismanagement and failure that has continued through economic downturn and even downturn in company performance.