Joan Coleman is an experienced telecommunications executive who retired after 23 years in the industry. During her career, Joan held multiple positions of increasing responsibility, culminating in her role as the State President of AT&T – Kentucky. While at Bellsouth and AT&T, Joan participated in the AT&T Extraordinary Leader training, as well as additional Leadership Institute training programs. Her experience and training focused on strategic planning, organizational behavior, employee and external relations, as well as the development and implementation of policy and strategic plans in the areas of technology, communications, marketing, regulatory and external affairs.
Joan has a passion for employees and their importance to the success of the organization. Joan directed employee communications programs, and created an Employee Satisfaction Team to create opportunities to engage employees in various ways to maximize their satisfaction. In addition, she worked with employee networking groups to promote diversity.
She was actively involved with bringing a new call center to Kentucky, by collaborating with employees, community leaders, and experts in the design and implementation of call center construction. Through this collaboration, the team created and built a new call center – the first of its kind in the company, which embraced the characteristics of the “creative class” of employees that were being attracted to join the call center team. This design was emulated in future call center designs in other states, and within another company in Louisville.
Joan was active in integrating the various organizations in Kentucky following the merger of Bellsouth and AT&T in 2007. With her “One AT&T” Leadership Development program, she brought together up and coming management employees to develop solutions to overall state issues, while at the same time embracing the cultural and organizational opportunities that were created by the merger.
Joan is focused on the customers and their relationships with the Company. Joan led teams of employees to address operational issues through the structure of a Customer Operations Team. In addition, she brought together a broad cross section of external consumer groups into a Consumer Advisory Panel, and sought input from all customer groups on new and upcoming company products, issues and opportunities. She also represented the organization’s corporate citizenship and sustainability values and goals on external boards and advisory groups. She continues to serve on multiple boards as a retired executive, and is passionate about the success of those non-profit organizations.
Joan is an electrical engineering graduate of the University of Kentucky, with a Masters in Public and Private Management from Birmingham Southern College. She is a trained facilitator, and has started a new business – Coleman Consulting.