Leading with Mentorship & Allyship

Andrea Genschaw, Senior Vice President and Controller, Lumen Technologies, has been hailed as a force for transformation within her company. She has been an strong advocate for company culture. Whether it’s engaging on employee forums, celebrating successes, mentoring future leaders within Lumen -- or just listening to the concerns of her team – she believes the company wins or loses by how employees feel when they come to work each day. Andrea takes a particular interest in building her team and motivating them toward constant learning to hone their skills and perform with their utmost capabilities. For Andrea, Lumen CEO Kate Johnson has been an inspirational motivator who initiated a new company culture based on Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead.

Andrea is the Executive Sponsor for the Colorado chapter of Women Empowered (WE), part of the company’s Employee Resource Groups focused on driving inclusive change to move women forward as part of its Diversity & Inclusion program. She also serves on the Advisory Committee for the 2023 Strategic AI Program at the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs and was an Advisor for the Customer Experience Certificate Program at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2022. “I’ve worked in audit, taken a fellowship with the SEC, and worked in the national office of a major public accounting firm – and I take great pride in all of that.”

Mentorship and allyship

“Regardless of self-identification or position within Lumen, mentorship and allyship are “a way to give back and recognize those leaders who’ve inspired me over the years. And I do my part by actively listening and supporting my team, guiding them with the best possible resources,” adds Andrea.

The pioneering leader has had numerous mentors and allies at every career step. Hence, Andrea understands the impact they can make on someone’s career and life. “I have an excellent problem-solving capability because I’ve had some wonderful mentors and allies at each stage of my career,” she explains.. “I will say that our former Controller was certainly a big part of my Lumen career and is likely the reason I’m so incredibly loyal to the company and my team here.”

Her advice to all is to ensure that they are working for someone willing to take risks on them or have the confidence to seek out mentors who will advocate for them and pay that forward with those they work with.

Armed with this great ideology, Andrea is helping take the company to new heights. Lumen connects the world. They are dedicated to igniting business growth by connecting people, data, and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly. Everything they do at Lumen takes advantage of their network strength. From metro connectivity to long-haul data transport to their edge cloud, security, and managed service capabilities, they meet customers’ needs today and as they build for tomorrow. “The Finance team is committed to our mission and have the customer at the center of everything we do. Strategic partnerships both inside and outside of Lumen ensure we can deliver for our customers, our vendors and partners, and within our communities,” Andrea says. “We are truly transforming inside Lumen thanks to our new North Star culture and have already made great progress in stopping what we don’t need in order to focus on what we do. This approach is making Lumen easy to do business with, reducing our complexity so our employees have the bandwidth to go above and beyond for our customers every time.”

It is pertinent to mention that the company recently closed on two significant divestitures concurrently completed in 2022, valued at over $10 billion, while also planning for a $1.8 billion divestiture expected to close in late 2023. For the days to come, Lumen will be concentrating on transformation. One of its top priorities is consolidating its Enterprise Resource Planning platform from four different versions into one consolidated global platform for all its financial systems. This integrated system will standardize and simplify processes, but getting an entirely new implementation is a long road. “The insights from this integration will enable us to solve for the most impactful issues and lead our transformation to drive more value for our internal partners, customers and external stakeholders. There is so much more to come. We see a future that is bright and prosperous,” concludes Andrea.