Serving more than 100 million customers requires more than scale — it demands empathy, consistency and relentless focus on reducing friction. In this interview, AT&T’s Mass Markets leader Jenifer Robertson explains how keeping individual customers at the center of decision-making helps large organizations stay human, responsive and resilient. From frontline empowerment to leadership traits like humble confidence and empathy, she outlines what it takes to guide teams through constant change while maintaining service quality.
The conversation also explores how network convergence is enabling new customer experiences. By combining fiber, wireless and satellite capabilities, AT&T is delivering greater reliability, smarter home connectivity and personalized network experiences. Innovations like wireless internet backup, connected home security and customized Wi-Fi controls highlight how intelligence at the network level can solve real-world pain points. Together, these advances point to a future where connectivity is not only faster, but more intuitive, resilient and tailored to how customers live and work.
Liz Coyne:
Hello, and welcome to Fierce Network Video. I'm Elizabeth Coyne, Editor-in-Chief, and I am here with Jenifer Robertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of AT&T Mass Markets. In this role, Jenifer leads the team responsible for AT&T mobility and consumer wireline businesses. Jenifer, welcome to Fierce Network Video.
Jenifer Robertson:
Thanks, Liz.
Liz Coyne:
Let's talk about your current role. Tell me about leading the Mass Markets organization and what parts of the job energize you the most?
Jenifer Robertson:
Oh, it's such an amazing role. We get to serve over 100 million customers every single day. And so what I'd tell you is, it's exactly that change over the last 25 years that inspires me and energizes me. We focus on the customer, and what I've been able to do from my very first role to the role I'm in today is serve those customers whose needs are constantly changing.
And it is that changing need, the dynamic of what customers expect of us, and then how we can serve them, that keeps me coming in every single day energized to figure out, what is the next pain point? What's the friction we can solve for them? How do we solve that? And then how do we equip our frontline experts to be able to solve those needs in the simplest, most frictionless possible way? And then how do we surprise and delight? And doing that, it's over 100 million customers, we don't always succeed. When we fail, we're committed to making it right proactively, but we get it right more than we get it wrong, and then we get to celebrate and do it again the next day. And so, it's that ever evolving customer need, the evolving technology and the chance to try again tomorrow that keeps me energized and coming back.
Liz Coyne:
So Jenifer, where did that mindset come from for you, personally? And how do you keep it alive in such a large organization?
Jenifer Robertson:
Well, personally, for me, I come from a family of people who serve others, doctors, nurses, those who serve in the military. And so, I found myself in corporate America comparing myself to my family and thinking, okay, well, I feel a little bit like I need to go serve others. And thankfully, I found myself in a company that has that spirit of service. So, I looked around and realized I wasn't that far off from where my family members were, because AT&T itself at its core is a group of people who serve others. What we do here matters. We connect people and connecting changes everything. We connect people to greater possibilities. And so, what I find is the people that show up here every day have that same belief. We're ready to step in when networks go down, during times of tragedy, during times of natural disaster. We're ready to step up to new products and innovations and the latest technology to bring new ways to connect. And we're ready to step in when a customer needs help, whether that's on their bill or troubleshooting their devices.
And so, keeping that spirit alive for me comes naturally, but also for the people here at AT&T, it comes naturally. And so, reaching that into a large team is all about making sure we keep that customer at the forefront, at the center of what we do. It's about making sure those customers remain human. We don't think of it as percentages and large averages. We think of it as an individual. Put a face and a name to it, and think of it if it's one customer in trouble, if it's one customer in need, if it's one customer that we lost yesterday, it's one customer too many. And so, how do we go solve for that? How do we design products for that one customer that we can name and we know what that one customer needs? It keeps it very personal, it keeps them very much in the forefront of our minds, and it keeps us inspired and engaged as we do that every single day.
Liz Coyne:
You've talked about leading this inside a large organization, so, and you have led large frontline teams from field ops to customer care. What's your management style when you're steering teams of this size through big transformations?
Jenifer Robertson:
I think for large teams, the key is consistency, communication, and being out there with the teams, especially when you're closer to the teams and you're able to get out and visit more often. I don't get to do that as much as I would like these days, but I do make sure the leaders are able to do that. And so if you can stay consistent and clear in your communications, deliver the vision of what you want to go do, and make sure they have the vision, the tools, and they know what they need to achieve, that's the biggest piece. For large teams, recognize the wins, remove the roadblocks for them. That's the key for the large teams.
What I'd tell you, how do I go then equip the leaders who need to be out there with the teams and serving them, is I go look for leaders who have three traits. And the three traits I look for in leaders are humble confidence, resilience, and empathy. And in that humble confidence aspect, it's leaders who are humble enough to realize they don't have all the answers, humble enough to take risks in front of other people and potentially fail. But they also have the confidence that they have the right vision and the confidence to go do in front of other people, and fail, because they know they can pick themselves back up and continue to lead. And then that resilience to do so, because like I said, we don't always get it right, but you have to go keep coming back the very next day and trying again and show your teams that they can do the same. And then being empathetic, actively present, engaging with those teams, and understanding what they need, listening, showing gratitude and showing up for your team.
And so those three components, if I can find that in the leadership team and those leaders can be consistent, present, communicating clearly, we can get a lot of goodness spread at scale. And that's how you reach through to large teams and distribute it.
Liz Coyne:
You must have learned all of this after being at one organization for 25 years. I mean, that to me shows that what you've just said really speaks to me personally and it shows that you've learned and grown through this role. And speaking of the time period that you've been there, you must have seen a lot of transformation on the networking side. So, right now we're talking about the convergence of fiber and wireless. So, what technical or product innovations are you most focused on driving next? Especially in 2026 and beyond when we're starting to see satellite and a lot of other technologies come into play?
Jenifer Robertson:
Yeah. So I would tell you, relative to AT&T, we've been on the forefront of what we are seeing across the industry with the convergence of these networks and technologies. And we really sit at a place that I think is the most advantage. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in this industry. We have scaled fiber assets and we've announced intentions to go to even higher scale. So, we have over 30 million fiber households passed. We've said we'll go to 65 plus million by the end of the decade. We have the nation's largest, most reliable wireless network, and we've just acquired significant spectrum assets this year that will give us the capacity to increase that wireless asset. And then you mentioned satellite, we have a partnership with AST that compliments that coverage for satellite.
So, when you bring those assets together and converge, we have the ability to offer products, like we have in the market today with our wireless internet backup. And AT&T fiber and AT&T wireless customer have the benefit of connectivity at home that never goes down. If your fiber for some reason gets cut, you're doing yard work in the backyard that perhaps you go through and you hit and you cut your fiber because you're gardening in the backyard, which happens. Your internet never goes down because it will automatically fail over to your wireless until we can get a technician out there to repair that cut for you. So you stay connected, which matters to us, because it matters to you.
What I'm looking forward to, we announced earlier this week, our new Connected Life product, and that's all about making sure that in your home, you have the smartest, most secure network experience and home environment that you can have. So, that brings to you Google's home experience, a secure experience that's professionally monitored, but that comes over AT&T's fastest and most reliable network. And so, it really does bring to you this first instance of a very smart, connected home over the fastest, most reliable network. That's the type of first step as we look at in the home experiences that we can do.
We also announced this week our personalized wifi experience. Again, that's coming in with the intelligence of our network and saying, we can bring to you as a customer what we know matters, which is not just securing your home, but then giving you the ability to customize your connectivity. So you can come into your experience, we understand how you use the network in your house, we know who is using, what the devices are doing in there, and we can make the network smarter for you, show you that, and give you control to personalize your wifi experiences. Those are the things that customers are telling us they want. Those are the things we can do over the network because we have those assets, and then we can turn around and solve those pain points.
Liz Coyne:
Sounds like there's a lot of interesting things happening at AT&T, especially into 2026, for sure. So, I want to say thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today, Jenifer, and I guess we'll catch you on the flip side.
Jenifer Robertson:
Sounds great, thank you so much.
Liz Coyne:
Thanks everybody, for watching Fierce Network Video. Tune in again soon.