Have you used your cellphone at a large stadium? What about an underground parking garage that was three levels deep? Ever wondered how you had signal there with no lofty reception towers?
You can thank Jennifer Fitzmaurice, current Executive Director – Chief of Staff of AT&T. In her previous role as AT&T’s Director of Construction and Engineering, Jennifer directed efforts to deploy something called a distributed antenna system (DAS) in public venues across the United States. This technological innovation uses many small, but strategically placed cell sites to achieve the same coverage as a tower, allowing some places like subway stations to receive signal even though they are 100 feet underground. Pretty nifty, right?
But Jennifer’s accomplishments don’t end there.
She has coordinated efforts to meet Enhanced 9-1-1 Phase 2 regulations. There used to be a time when you had to tell the 9-1-1 operator your location when using a cellphone. This was sometimes difficult when a caller did not know where they were, or if the emergency itself made it impossible to communicate that. Phase 2 changed all of that. It allowed operators to pinpoint the caller’s location through the phone’s GPS hardware or through a signal triangulation between cell towers. Needless to say, this has saved hundreds if not thousands of lives every year.
For someone who claims to have started in telecom by chance, Jennifer has accomplished a great deal within the industry. As a STEM advocate who majored in mathematics, she also serves on the Board of AT&T Women of Technology and Network, which encourages the recruitment and development of women in the STEM fields by providing education and networking opportunities. Always looking to give back, Jennifer hopes to spend more time with T-University, a program that develops leadership capabilities at every level within the AT&T organization.
For these reasons, Jennifer Fitzmaurice is a Telecom Game Changer.
