2010 S
WOMEN OF COLOR AWARD WINNERS
hirley White is a trailblazer in the information technol- ogy field. A Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from historically black Mississippi Valley State University opened doors to opportunities in the retail industry. She found a “perfect fit” career with a true American icon. Ms. White joined JC Penney 30 years ago, when compact disks and the IBM PC were being designed and developed, and the Visa card began to be accepted in JC Penney stores.
Part of the areas that support and develop the company’s business for three decades, she is currently a senior manager of the price execution systems in JC Penney stores, and in its catalog and Internet businesses. She is responsible for the systems that provide pricing to the customer facing business areas of the chain of stores across America.
Ms. White is ranked in the company’s top 1 percent of IT program managers. Some of her initiatives include serving as program manager for the Y2K readiness project and coordi- nating efforts of 95 major IT and business groups across the enterprise and more than 1,100 stores in all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
She led the development of an object-oriented technol- ogy upgrade of the price execution platform and rolled out software in a record five months. She also managed develop- ment of a multi-tier system that automates store opening and closing store tasks, and developed the first open-architecture access and notification system, which reduced security request, approval, and receipt time from two weeks to one hour.
Ms. White led development of a menu-driven point of sale system and a price test management system that allows the execution of various price configurations for an item to test customers’ acceptance of alternative pricing. The pricing engine is used in all JC Penney retail stores.
systems. Dr. Abella first distinguished herself by building an innovative natural language dialog management system for AT&T’s “How May I Help You?” customer care service, which was deployed in 2000.
A
Growing out of this work, she started a project that devel- oped a tool for analyzing interactions with interactive voice response systems. She not only designed this, but drove it forward until it was put into use within AT&T in 2009. It’s now a service supporting millions of calls per day for AT&T’s customer contact centers. Dr. Abella has numerous patents and publications for these efforts.
Recently, she was recognized for her contributions in the area of green technology by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute at its 2009 conference, Latinos Leading the Green Economy and Partnering for the Future. Two years ago, she was awarded the AT&T Science and Technology Medal for outstanding research, vision and leadership in interactive voice dialing and natural language dialog management. In her current position, she leads a group of researchers dedi- cated to eliminating the need for airplane travel and other high-carbon commuting methods.
] Shirley White [
IT Senior Manager JC Penney Company,
44 WOMENOFCOLOR | FALL 2010
In addition to her efforts to promote sustainable solutions, Dr. Abella — the first woman of color to hold a research leader- ship position at AT&T, and only the fourth woman since the formation of the AT&T Lab research organization—works to increase the presence of minorities and women in STEM. As executive vice president of the Young Science Achievers Pro- gram and chair of the AT&T Labs Fellowship Committee, she encourages, advises and evaluates candidates for a graduate scholarship from AT&T targeted at women and minorities.
www.womenofcolor.net
] Alicia Abella, Ph.D. [ Executive Director
The Innovative Services Research Department AT&T Corporation
licia Abella is an agent of change. For 15 years, her work at AT&T has focused on efforts to improve the human experience while interacting with computer
NEW MEDIA/IT LEADERSHIP
PIONEER AWARD
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