As president of AT&T’s South Coastal States, Venessa Harrison led transformational wireless and wireline deployment efforts for the company’s critical infrastructure across Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, including the strategic direction of AT&T’s network investment, public policy, economic development and community engagement activities throughout the region.

Additionally, she helped shape public policy in areas of telecom and tax reform, and has represented the telecommunications industry before multiple state legislatures and public service commissions regarding infrastructure matters.  She oversaw nearly $2 billion in network spend annually – spend that has supported the expansion of AT&T Georgia’s fiber network to more than 6.4 million strand miles and wireless network to nearly 100 percent of the state’s geographic footprint.

Harrison currently serves on the executive boards of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, and on the boards of the Atlanta Committee for Progress, the Georgia Historical Society and the Georgia Research Alliance, an internationally acclaimed model for unifying business, research universities and state government to drive a vibrant economy. She has also served as trustee chair of North Carolina A&T, the largest historically Black university in the country and the number one producer of degrees awarded to African Americans in North Carolina.

Harrison earned a business administration degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Phoenix.