John T. Stankey (born 1962) is an American businessman who is the chairman and CEO of

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

. He previously was AT&T's president and COO and before that CEO of

WarnerMedia Warner Media, LLC (Trade name, doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational corporation, multinational mass media and show business, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 ...

. He assumed the CEO role of AT&T in July 2020, succeeding

Randall L. Stephenson Randall Lynn Stephenson (born April 22, 1960) is a retired American telecommunications executive. He served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of AT&T Inc. from 2007 to 2020. He was national president of Scouting America from 2016 to 2 ...

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. Stankey received a

Bachelor of Business Administration A Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) is an undergraduate degree in business administration awarded by colleges and universities after completion of four years and typically 120 credits of undergraduate study in the fundamentals of busine ...

with a major in finance from

Loyola Marymount University Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a private Jesuit and Marymount research university in Los Angeles, California. LMU enrolls over 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, making it the largest Catholic university on the west coast of the ...

in Los Angeles in 1985. He received a

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular ...

from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

in 1991.

Career

In 1985, Stankey took an entry-level position with

Pacific Bell The Pacific Bell Telephone Company (Pac Bell) is a telephone company that provides telephone service in California. The company is owned by AT&T through AT&T Teleholdings, and, though separate, is now marketed as “AT&T”. The company has ...

, which was acquired by

SBC Communications AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the ...

in 1996. He went on to serve as the executive vice president of industry markets beginning in 1998, and became the executive president of industry markets in 2000. In 2001, he became the president and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of SBC Southwest. Stankey served as CIO of the "new AT&T" after the merger of SBC with

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to busi ...

finalized in 2005. He was the senior executive vice president and CTO for AT&T from 2008 to 2012. In January 2012, he became the CSO and group president of AT&T. In 2018, Stankey was named CEO of

, which owned various media and film corporations, including

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

Turner Broadcasting System Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner in 1965. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner (later WarnerMedia) on October 10, 1996. As of April 2022, all of its asse ...

, and

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

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

AT&T CEO

On April 1, 2020, AT&T announced that Stankey would be stepping down as CEO of WarnerMedia. On July 1, 2020, he replaced

as CEO of AT&T Inc., then was elected chairman in February 2025. In February 2021, Stankey oversaw the sale of a third of AT&T's stake in DirecTV to

TPG Capital TPG Inc., previously known as Texas Pacific Group and TPG Capital, is an American private equity firm based in Fort Worth, Texas. TPG manages investment funds in growth capital, venture capital, public equity, and debt investments. The firm in ...

for $16.25 billion. AT&T had paid 48 billion ($67 billion including debt) to purchase DirecTV in 2015 under Stephenson. AT&T's remaining 70% stake in DirecTV was sold to TPG for $7.6 billion, announced in September 2024 and closing in 2025. Stankey also oversaw WarnerMedia's sale to Discovery Inc. in May 2021, for $43 billion in cash, plus an estimated $59 billion in Discovery, Inc. stock. AT&T had paid $85 billion for WarnerMedia in 2018 under Stephenson. On April 30, 2021, AT&T announced that a nonbinding shareholder vote had rejected AT&T's executive compensation proposal by a slight majority, which came after reports that AT&T had "lost $5.4 billion and cut thousands of jobs". Note, this quote presents in its entirety, the content of this article with regard to Mr. Stankey. In 2023, Stankey's total compensation from AT&T was $25.7 million, representing a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 193-to-1. Stankey refocused AT&T on broadband and cellular availability, connectivity, and speed, including partnering with AST SpaceMobile to provide mobile phone service to remote areas via satellite. Under his leadership, AT&T expanded its network of fiber-optic cables, including to places it didn't already provide broadband, and entered a joint venture with

BlackRock BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager ...

called Gigapower to build fiber-optic networks in metro areas around the country. After the US government ceased funding the Affordable Connectivity Program, in April 2024 Stankey announced that AT&T would direct $3 billion to address the

digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...

of high-speed-internet access in the United States, including increasing the number of its Connected Learning Centers, which offer free computer and internet use and skills training, from 37 to 50 in 2024.

Additional posts

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stankey, John 1962 births AT&T people American chairpersons of corporations American chief executives in the mass media industry American chief technology officers American technology chief executives American telecommunications industry businesspeople Businesspeople from Los Angeles Chief information officers Living people Mass media people from Los Angeles Warner Bros. Discovery people