Ralph de la Vega

Vice President of AT&T Inc. and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Business Solutions and AT&T International. Previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Mobile & Business Solutions; President and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Mobility; Chief Operating Officer of Cingular Wireless; President of BellSouth Latin America Operations; and President of broadband and Internet services for BellSouth. He is also the author of the 2009 book Obstacles Welcome: How to Turn Adversity into Advantage in Business and in Life.

Ralph de la Vega was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States in 1962, at the age of ten. Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, his family attempted to board a plane bound for Miami; however, the border official indicated that only Ralph's papers were in order. He was sent to the U.S. alone, where he stayed with a friend of an aunt. It took four years for his parents to reunite with him.

Once his parents arrived, De la Vega took a job after school, sweeping floors in a clothing factory to help the family. He was later promoted and began making money selling the company's clothing.

De la Vega eventually enrolled in a pre-engineering program at Miami Dade College, and worked part-time as a draftsman at an engineering firm. He later earned his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida Atlantic University.

He later received a Master's degree in Business Administration from Northern Illinois University. He also completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia and received an honorary doctorate from Florida Atlantic.

De la Vega began his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant. Over the years he held positions in network planning, consumer services, engineering, DSL, and operations.

In 1985 he became one of the directors at Bell's Communications Research Technical Education Center (Bellcore TEC). He was later named responsible for telecommunications network operations across all of BellSouth in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He subsequently became president of BellSouth Broadband Internet Services. De la Vega eventually became president of BellSouth Latin America, a position he held from 2002 to 2003. In this role he oversaw wireless subsidiaries in eleven countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The chief executives of each company reported to De la Vega, who restructured the group's decision-making infrastructure in order to create cooperative strategies and policies among the different companies. By the end of his first year as president, BellSouth Latin America turned a profit for the first time.

De la Vega later served as Chief Operating Officer of Cingular Wireless, beginning in 2004. In 2007 Cingular purchased AT&T, and he was named Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Mobility. De la Vega was one of the leaders of the merger.

At AT&T he established relationships between the company's mobile unit and car manufacturers, including General Motors, in order to expand the company's market for automotive connectivity. He also worked to promote efforts to gain subscribers from AT&T's competitors. He was the one who brought the iPhone to the company. De la Vega was Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Mobility until 2014, when he was promoted to President and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T's Mobile & Business Solutions group.

One of De la Vega's main goals in this position was to develop AT&T's role in the Internet and offer integrated services for business customers. In 2016 he became Vice President of AT&T Inc. and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Business Solutions and AT&T International.

In 2009 De la Vega became co-author with Paul Brown of the book "Obstacles Welcome: How to Turn Adversity into Advantage in Business and in Life". De la Vega decided to write the work due to the response he received following speeches he gave. The goal of the book was to provide career and life advice to youth and young professionals. The book contains "four pillars of success" and "six key points" in which he uses his personal story to structure his advice.

De la Vega has also written for newspapers including Cnet.

Ralph De la Vega was elected Executive of the Year by the Association of Latino Finance and Accounting Professionals and appears on the list of "50 most important Hispanics in technology and business in the United States". He is a former member of the Board of Directors of Junior Achievement of Georgia, where he serves as president of the JA Hispanic Initiative, a program to encourage Hispanic students to stay in school and prepare for success in the U.S. business world. Additionally, he has been a member of the board of directors of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Georgia Aquarium. He is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts of America, the governing body of the organization, and is a member of the Board for the Georgia chapter of the Boy Scouts of America.

De la Vega was featured on HBO's Latino List Point 2 where he discussed his experience alongside other impactful Latinos. In 2011 he was awarded the Emory University Global Innovation Award. He has also been a trustee of Morehouse College.

In 2019 Digital Trends magazine, on the occasion of Hispanic Heritage Month, considers Ralph de la Vega as one of the most influential Hispanics in the technology industry, for the key role he played in bringing the iPhone to the market.