Doug Gaston
General Counsel
With more than $22 billion in consolidated revenue in 2005, Comcast Corporation is the nation’s largest broadband cable provider. Comcast also has a controlling interest in six national cable networks, including E! Entertainment Television and The Golf Channel. Comcast serves more than 21 million video subscribers, eight million high-speed Internet subscribers, and one million phone subscribers. Its other business interests include Comcast Spectator, which owns the Philadelphia Flyers and 76ers.
(L to R): Glenn M. Engelmann of AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals; Doug Gaston of Comcast Corporation; and Veta T. Richardson of MCCA
Senior Vice President and General Counsel Doug Gaston leads a diverse team, of which 21 percent are minorities and 32 percent are women. “At Comcast, diversity is more than a project or a program—it is an ongoing, corporate-wide commitment our company makes to our employees and our customers,” says Gaston.
“In recognizing diversity as a key component of our corporate culture, the Law Department at Comcast actively recruits and provides mentorship opportunities for minorities and women, while forging relationships with several organizations to stress the importance of difference in perspective and background,” Gaston explains.
Comcast Cable Law Department members are actively involved in numerous multicultural bar associations and organizations. On a local level, the department is a member of the board of directors of the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group, a nonprofit organization committed to increasing the number of attorneys of diverse backgrounds working at law firms and corporate law departments in the greater Philadelphia region.
To develop into leaders, Comcast lawyers participate in company and industry leadership programs, including Leadership Philadelphia and the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute, a leadership program for women sponsored by Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT). The legal team is also active in priming the pipeline for future legal talent. Attorneys mentor law school students and recent graduates with multicultural backgrounds, and the department recently partnered with the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll to have a minority summer associate rotate through the department for a one-week period.
Comcast has received many awards for its diversity achievements. DiversityInc. magazine recognized Comcast as one of the “25 Notable Companies for Diversity” in 2005 and 2006. In 2006 alone, the company received the Youth Council Leadership Award from the NAACP, the Corporate Community Diversity Award from the National Conference for Community Justice, the Corporation of the Year Award from the Alameda County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the African American, Hispanic, Asian and Native American Business Network of Spokane’s Excellence Award. Also in 2006, more than 10 Comcast employees received individual awards from a range of publications and organizations, including Hispanic Engineer & Information Technology magazine, Black MBA Magazine, Women in Cable Telecommunications, and the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC).
From the November/December 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®