This ongoing Q&A series profiles a few of the speakers we're looking forward to seeing at this year's Net Impact Conference. Nicole is the Director of Philanthropy at AT&T and will be speaking in our Corporate Impact track.

If you could spend 15 minutes with one impact hero past or present, who would it be and why?

Making an impact is hard and typically unpopular because it involves a behavior change on someone else’s part. I find most true heroes of impact are unsung.

I’d like to go back in time to meet Dr. Ignatz Semmelweis, a young Hungarian doctor who arrived at the Vienna General Hospital in 1847 and was appalled at the high death rate (1 in 6) of women coming to the hospital to give birth. Through research, he discovered that doctors weren’t washing their hands prior to assisting in childbirth, so bacteria from the cadavers they visited each morning was infecting the women and causing their deaths. It seemed that washing hands would be a simple solution that would have incredible impact and easy to implement. Dr. Semmelweis shared his finding with his colleagues but instead of being embraced, he was ostracized and died a fairly unpopular man. But more than 100 years later, hospitals are implementing his hand washing programs for medical staff!

With the benefit of hindsight, I would love the opportunity to go back in time to thank Dr. Semmelweis as a true impact hero — to give him encouragement against the naysayers and buy him a drink to ease his burden. As a mother of two and impact-worker myself, he is a hero to me.

What’s one surprising stat or emerging trend anyone looking to make an impact in your field should know?

An adult needs to hear something eight times before he/she truly hears it and internalizes the message. So if you are looking to make an impact, be prepared to sound like a broken record. Some folks will take to it the first time, but your real success may come much farther down the road than you anticipated. And that’s okay because it will still feel awesome when it happens. As a side note from personal experience, I advise quadrupling this stat with young children.

What do you love about your work?

It may sound trite, but it’s the people. I work with the most amazing, driven, and funny people I know, and it’s a blast! The CSR space attracts forward-thinking, creative people who like to work hard and make a difference. Although the work can be tedious and challenging at times, the big wins are incredible, and it is important to have a collaborative team to lean on in both the good and stressful times.

What's your best advice for someone who wants to create positive change through their career?

Learn the business first. You won’t win over many supporters if you charge in the first day with all the great ideas on how to make positive change. Chances are quite good that your colleagues have been there for some time already. Although they may seem old and out of step to you, if you take the time to get to know your colleagues and their expertise, you will learn the internal culture and unwritten rules of the organization that will make it easier for you to create even greater change throughout your career. I’m not saying you won’t break the rules at some point, as you’ll have to in order to truly champion change, but it’s helpful to learn those rules first, especially the unspoken ones.

About Nicole

Nicole Anderson is Executive Director of Philanthropy at AT&T and President of the AT&T Foundation, responsible for the operations and strategy of AT&T’s corporate charitable giving programs, including the AT&T Foundation’s signature program, AT&T Aspire. Under Aspire, AT&T has committed to investing $350 million between 2008-2016 to help students succeed — in school, in the workforce, and in life. Prior to this assignment, she implemented an employee activation initiative around sustainability that won the 2013 PR News/CSR Award for Workplace Innovation. She is speaking at the Power of Partnership: Raising the Bar on Corporate and NGO Collaboration session at the conference.

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This year's conference is over, but you can also catch up with video of several sessions on our site. Watch now!