“I was born in Haiti, and my parents immigrated to the U.S. when I was five-year-old,” Pascal Desroches, senior executive vice president and CFO of AT&T, told me. In their late 30s with four kids, his parents were in search of better opportunities for their children, Desroches says. Today, he is the finance chief at the biggest telecom company in the world.

Desroches grew up in Queens, N.Y. His parents were strict about one thing—education, he says. While his older brother pursued medicine, his sister, law, and his younger brother, engineering, “I just wanted to do something different,” Desroches says. A family friend was a CPA and made a nice living, so he went in that direction. 

Courtesy of AT&T

He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from St. John’s University, then began a 12-year tenure at KPMG. Just before he was promoted to partner, he was granted a fellowship to serve as a senior adviser to the chief accountant of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. During his time at KPMG, he earned an MBA from Columbia Business School. Desroches’ next step was joining Time Warner Inc., where he became SVP and controller. He then took on the job as CFO at Turner. Next, CFO at WarnerMedia. In April 2021, he began his tenure as AT&T’s finance chief.

Research published in January by Crist Kolder Associates analyzed the ethnic and racial diversity of CFOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies (678 sitting CFOs). Between 2020 and 2021, the number of companies with Black CFOs increased from 12 to 20. That is an all-time high, according to the report. As a CFO with more than 30 years of finance experience, it’s safe to say Desroches has helped pave the way for other Black executives.

I asked him if mentors and sponsors were vital in his career, “Without a doubt,” he told me. “No one gets there by themselves. It is a combination of opportunity meeting preparation.” He joined Time Warner, Inc. in 2001, shortly after the merger with AOL. Dick Parsons, CEO of Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) from 2002 to 2007, was one of his many mentors, Desroches says. Parsons was one of the first Black men to lead a Fortune 500 company.

“Over the years, I’ve been really fortunate to have really good and talented people take an interest in helping me along my journey,” he says. “I’ve mentored people of color because I understand how lonely it could be, especially as you elevate yourself to improve the organization.” As AT&T works to increase diversity in senior leadership roles, it offers development programs for employees including the Executive Black Leadership Experience, Executive Women’s Leadership Experience, Lift and Connect, Women of Color Initiative, and Executive LatinX Leadership Experience, according to the company.

His advice: “You have to believe in yourself,” he says. “Get out of your comfort zone, learn new skills, and expose yourself to different areas of the business.” He chose his brother, Reginald Desroches, as an example. “Twenty years ago, he declared to me, ‘I’m going to be a university president,'” Desroches says. “He’s just been named the next president of Rice University.”

I asked Desroches about his first year as AT&T’s CFO. “Even though I grew up in the media business, I am staying in the connectivity business,” he told me. The company is now in the second year of a transformation process, he says. AT&T is going back to its telecommunications roots. For example, the company completed a DirecTV spinoff in the Q3 of 2021. Also a spinoff of WarnerMedia for a merger with Discovery, Inc., is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.

As AT&T refocuses on connectivity, Desroches told me he feels strongly that a renewed investment in telecom networks will support underserved communities. Last year, the company made a three-year, $2 billion commitment to address the digital divide, including low-cost broadband offerings. 

“There is no opportunity without access,” Desroches says. “Access opens the door to equity. Equity is how we realize equality for all.”

See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

Big deal

The 2022 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report by Appcast, a recruitment advisor, is based on an analysis of 165 million job ad clicks (and 8 million applies) from nearly 1,200 employers. As the war for talent continues, what's the best day to post job openings? Organizations continue to receive the most applications on Monday. The report takes a look at the state of hiring, including the cost of recruitment and advertising over the past year, along with the state of remote work. 

Courtesy of Appcast

Going deeper

Deloitte's Legal Business Services' new report, The Value of Entity Management, Part 1: The Impact on Mergers and Acquisitions, found that in M&A transactions, companies with sound legal entity management (LEM) attract higher prices, among other benefits. Six results of substandard LEM: jeopardizing the credibility of the company; increasing deal risk; driving down the deal price; possible restructuring of the deal; and grossly inflating professional fees. The report is based on detailed interviews with 12 M&A attorneys with experience at law firms, including Mayer Brown and Thompson Hine, as well as in-house counsel from Carrier and Dell.

Leaderboard

Gerald M. Haines II was named CFO at Metabolon, Inc., effective April 1. Current CFO John Kurtzweil has announced his retirement. Haines joins Metabolon from Impulse Dynamics, where he served as EVP and CFO. Before Impulse, Haines held senior executive leadership roles at multiple public companies, including Mercury Systems and Verenium Corporation.Haines will partner with the leadership team to help guide the company’s strategic development and market expansion plans.

Thomas Tran was named CFO at UpStream Healthcare. Tran has over 35 years of experience in healthcare and retired in early 2021 as CFO of Molina Healthcare. He previously served as CFO of WellCare Health Plans, Inc., and held senior leadership roles at UnitedHealth Group, ConnectiCare, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Cigna. Tran will also have a seat on the company board.

Overheard

"This is a unique situation. We’ve always had compensation go up and down based on the labor market, but now there’s this cumulative fatigue of COVID remote work. It’s all new."

— Alan Johnson, a consultant who helps financial firms design their pay programs, explains why money isn't enough in the war for talent as employees are looking for a change of scenery to cure this growing sense of fatigue, as told to Fortune.