‘It goes beyond cutting a check.’

On today’s Up To Speed Live, host Andy Choi shared updates on the busy week to come:

A great time to give back

Today marks the beginning of National Volunteer Week, an opportunity for all of us to give back and recognize the power we all have in changing the world. Take some time to visit our volunteer portal or head to the Inside Verizon app. We’ve got an article with all kinds of family-friendly, fun activities you can choose from.

If you’re wondering how we’re doing on our long-term goal for employee volunteer hours, we are on track to reach our objective of 2.5 million by 2025. In fact, in just the first quarter of 2021, our V Team completed 128,157 volunteer hours helping our local communities. Let’s keep up the great effort!

Our latest climate initiatives

Verizon just announced several environmental initiatives to reduce our global climate impact. Included are new science-based targets and a carbon-avoidance goal, a new social-impact accelerator program to help communities adapt in the face of climate change and an update to our previously-announced goal to plant 20 million trees by 2030.

We also published our 2020 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report. It contains lots of great stats and information on how we’re leveraging our technology, operations and employees to move the world forward for a more connected, secure and sustainable future.

Diversity and finance

We’ve spent the past year discussing topics that deal with race, representation and inclusion. On today’s episode, we had a substantive discussion on how these topics are playing out in the world of Wall Street. The panel included two of our V Team Finance leaders, Scott Krohn, SVP- Treasury, and Susanne Ferrara-Mora, VP-Treasury, as well as Sidney Dillard, partner and Head of Corporate Investment Banking at Loop Capital, and Bob Hong, Managing Director at Ramirez and Co. The latter is a boutique Hispanic-owned brokerage that is celebrating 50 years in business.

The conversation also hit on all that Verizon’s Finance team is doing to use our power as a large corporation to help create lasting, generational change through important partnerships in the capital markets.

Forward for good

We believe that technology can be a part of advancing climate justice and have recently announced the launch of our Forward for Good Accelerator, a multi-year initiative designed to advance technology solutions that address some of our most critical societal challenges. Learn more on Thursday, April 22, at 2 PM ET/11 AM PT on our Verizon Twitter page.

The busy week ahead

Mark your calendars for all of the following:

• Tuesday ‒ 5G news. Be sure to watch tomorrow’s Up To Speed for multiple 5G announcements. That sounds both mysterious and exciting!
• Wednesday ‒ Q1 Earnings Webcast. Hans and our leadership will be sharing not only where we’ve been, but also where we’re going and how we’re growing So be sure to tune in Wednesday at 12 PM ET/9 AM PT.
• Thursday ‒ Earth Day. We’ll have a great Up To Speed episode about our favorite mother — Mother Earth — as we celebrate Earth Day.
• Also this Thursday, we’ve got a special Earth Day #Next20 on Climate Justice featuring Dr. Ayana Johnson. She is a marine biologist, co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab and co-host of the podcast How to Save a Planet. She’ll talk about what we can do to survive and thrive as the climate changes, especially in our most vulnerable communities. Learn more on Thursday, April 22, at 2 PM ET/11 AM PT on our Verizon Twitter page.
• Friday ‒ Oscars time. Lights, camera, action! We end the week with a black-tie affair on the red carpet as we talk to CMO Diego Scotti about all the ways we’re making Verizon a big part of the Oscars.

If you have any questions, email them to live@verizon.com.

Click here for a transcript of the webcast.

Get the latest information on our Coronavirus Resource Page (Inside Verizon, The Street).

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