AT&T Miami Employee Honored for Her Volunteerism

Sandy Thomas is known as an AT&T “rock star” volunteer. And that’s just how she was treated when she recently traveled to Dallas to receive the prestigious AT&T Aspire Volunteer Champion Award.

An AT&T equipment design engineer in Miami, Sandy lives her life by the famous words of Sir Winston Churchill: “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

Sandy has spent most of her adult life volunteering through the AT&T Pioneers and several AT&T employee resource groups, including Women of AT&T, NETwork, and AT&T Veterans. Her passions are helping children, the underserved, seniors and veterans.

Sandy helps provide food for the hungry with the Joshua’s Heart Foundation. She helps adults with mental and physical disabilities through events with the WOW Center Miami. She escorts veterans on Honor Flights to Washington, D.C., to tour the war memorials. She serves meals to the families at the Ronald McDonald House, and volunteers with SafeSpace, a program for domestic violence victims.

But one of Sandy’s favorite volunteer activities is as a mentor for AT&T Aspire, where she is helping students succeed. Aspire is AT&T’s signature philanthropic initiative to help students across the globe graduate high school on time, access and persist in college, and train for the future workforce.

More than 1 in 3 students at risk of not graduating from high school grow up without an adult mentor in their life. AT&T Aspire seeks to improve that statistic by providing young people with mentoring by AT&T employees, like Sandy. She has been an AT&T Aspire mentor since the program’s inception 10 years ago. Through Aspire, AT&T has provided more than 2.2 million hours of mentoring to students across the country since 2012.

In addition to leading her colleagues through mentoring, Sandy has supported AT&T Aspire by leading a STEM Tech training with Women of AT&T and organized a City Year Care Force event with AT&T volunteers to beautify local schools in Miami. She has also been instrumental in working with Black Girls CODE in Miami to help young women of color gain computer science skills.

“There’s nothing more rewarding and fulfilling than helping another,” Sandy said. “These young students I mentor are so grateful for the help and guidance. It’s great to watch them over the course of time grow and blossom into more self-confident young adults. It makes me feel good to know I’ve played a role in getting them ready for their next step in life.”

The AT&T Aspire Volunteer Champion Award is not the first time Sandy has been recognized for her volunteerism. She is a 4-time winner of the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA). The PVSA, an initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service, celebrates the impact we can all make in bettering our communities and our world through volunteerism.

The PVSA is awarded at 3 levels: Gold for 500 or more hours volunteered in a 12-month period; Silver for 250-499 hours; and Bronze for 100-249 volunteer hours.

Sandy has received 3 Gold PVSAs and 1 Silver PVSA.

But that’s not surprising. After all, she’s a person who makes a life by what she gives.