NAF Alumnus Lands Coveted Spot in AT&T Future Leaders Program

When Tobi Graham attended NAF’s Annual Benefit last year, he was one of a small group of high school students given the opportunity to showcase their work and build their professional networks. As a senior at Pathways Academy of Technology and Design in Hartford, CT, Tobi participated in NAF’s Lenovo Scholar Network mobile app development project, creating an app called Savant that enables schools to collaborate and students to organize their school assignments. Tobi presented the app to guests at the 2015 NAF Benefit.

In attendance that night was AT&T executive, Scott Smith, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for AT&T and member of NAF’s national STEM Advisory Committee. AT&T has been a longstanding partner of NAF’s, providing IT and engineering expertise as well as financial support for recruitment and retention efforts for NAF academies in Dallas, Birmingham, Miami, and Oklahoma City through the AT&T Aspire High School Success Initiative, which creates connections that drive innovation in education.

AT&T is also a founding partner in NAF’s latest initiative, NAFTrack Certified Hiring, a promise by a growing number of America’s top companies to give special consideration to job applicants who earned NAFTrack Certification in high school.  NAFTrack Certified Hiring provides a pipeline of skilled employees to participating companies while providing opportunities for students to build their networks early on and grow long-standing relationships with business professionals.

While NAFTrack is new, the concept rings true of what the NAF academy experience is all about: students developing skills to help them land that dream job including interviewing, networking, and presenting – all skills Tobi tapped in order to impress business leaders, including Mr. Smith.

“I’ve been very impressed with Tobi since I met him at the NAF Benefit last year, and I’m excited that he chose AT&T for his internship,” Mr. Smith said. ”He’s a great example of the type of bright young leader we are looking for in our company – one who is passionate about technology – and are proud to see come out of the NAFTrack pipeline.”

Following the NAF Benefit, Tobi graduated from his NAF academy and now attends Eastern Connecticut State University majoring in business information systems. He kept in touch with Mr. Smith and when the opportunity came up, Mr. Smith recommended Tobi for AT&T’s Future Leaders Internship Experience (FLITE) program.  This elite program exposes top students to key roles across functions allowing participants to explore career options, gain new perspectives and learn from AT&T’s diverse leadership.

“I always envisioned working in a corporate environment and I wanted to go somewhere that had a great reputation, so I chose AT&T,” said Tobi.

Tobi will begin his internship in June.