Chairman’s Message: Making Corporate Responsibility Work

“Our people believe passionately that what we do makes a difference for customers and our society as a whole.”

Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg addresses the Consumer Electronics Association.

At Verizon, we manage corporate responsibility the way we do anything we truly care about as a business: with disciplined goals, a focus on results, a commitment to operating excellence and a grounding in our corporation's core values and beliefs.

In 2007, we reorganized our Corporate Responsibility Council to better align with the core competencies of our business. It is chaired by two senior officers—Tom Tauke, executive vice president of Public Affairs, Policy and Communications and Dan Mead, president of Verizon Services Operations—and includes leaders from all operating units as well as our Foundation and corporate responsibility staffs. Under their leadership, the council establishes benchmarks and goals, assigns and enforces accountability and measures and tracks results.

This results-oriented process keeps us focused on “materiality” using our enormous technical, financial and intellectual resources to accomplish something equally significant.

Our focus on performance is reflected in our Progress Update, which lays out what we said, what we did and what we will do next in each of our priority areas.

In 2007, we made big strides in areas of critical importance to our business, from risk assessment to global supply-chain management to strategic philanthropy, and we are constantly honing our ability to use the intelligence we gain from these initiatives to make ourselves a smarter, better business.

We always have more to do and more to learn. Our corporate responsibility process is helping us do that—functioning as an early warning system, helping us view ourselves from the outside in, and making us a learning organization that can adapt to the threats and opportunities that, in an interconnected world, arise with astonishing speed.

Verizon is fortunate. We have a strong culture and great employees, and we work in an industry with boundless possibilities for growth and innovation. But at the end of the day, you have to do the work. With the help of our employees, our partners and our stakeholders, Verizon is doing some pretty terrific work to improve people's lives, create a great place to work and make a difference for our customers.

Ivan Seidenberg
Chairman & CEO