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| AT&T's Kimberly E. McCullough-Starks |
When Kimberly E. McCullough-Starks reflects on her life these days, she can’t help but marvel how her high-powered career as an AT&T executive has led her right back to her start as a high school student.
In the early 1980s, McCullough-Starks was helped along her path to college by the McKinley College Preparation and Placement Program, where she worked closely with a counselor to narrow down her top school selections, complete her college applications and navigate the tricky financial aid system. Nowadays, she is responsible for helping others find pathways to success through her role as the director of external affairs at AT&T in Chicago.
“There’s such intrinsic value in helping people. It makes me feel like I’ve come full circle,” said McCullough-Starks, who oversees AT&T’s philanthropic partnerships and community outreach in the Chicago metropolitan area.
The telecommunications giant, which counts education as one of its core philanthropic priorities, recently awarded Ada S. McKinley Community Services a $5,000 Investing in Illinois Grant to support the College Prep Program. Naturally, it’s a cause that McCullough-Starks considers near and dear to her own heart.
“It’s so meaningful for me to be able to support McKinley. I know firsthand the important work they do—not only am I the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college, I am also the very first person on my mother’s side of the family to graduate from college.”
It was McCullough-Starks’ mother who was responsible for propelling her daughter to enroll in higher education. “My father passed away when I was a sophomore in high school,” recalled McCullough-Starks, who grew up as the youngest of three children on the South Side of Chicago.
“My mother didn’t have the money to send us away to college—my two older brothers hadn’t gone—but she heard through friends about Ada S. McKinley and she encouraged me to talk with a counselor there.”
McCullough-Starks, who was a high school student at Percy L. Julian High School at the time, soon got the help she needed. Through the McKinley College Prep Program, she was able to narrow down her list of target schools and, more critically, get a financial aid package to help make college a reality. Following her graduation from Julian in 1984, she enrolled at Southern Illinois University (SIU) in Carbondale.
But always one committed to charting her own course, the independent-minded McCullough-Starks soon came to feel that SIU didn’t allow her enough freedom to flex her creative muscles. Sensing that the school wasn’t a right fit for her, she returned home to Chicago before the start of her sophomore year in 1986.
She soon began working in then-Governor Jim Thompson’s office, the start of a seven-year stint in state government before she joined Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority (MPEA), the municipal corporation that owns Chicago’s McCormick Place and Navy Pier, as its director of business and workforce diversity.
Yet as her career at “McPier” (as MPEA is colloquially known) took off, McCullough-Starks never lost track of her college ambitions. “When I was at McPier, I drafted a tuition reimbursement program for the company,” she remembered with a wide smile. “I really wanted to go back to college myself, so when it was passed, I took advantage of it.”
In 1998, she enrolled in DePaul University in Chicago and, by 2000, she had finished her undergraduate degree in public administration, all while juggling her full-time job at McPier and supporting her mother who was suffering from stage-4 metastatic breast cancer.
McCullough-Starks is most proud of the work that she did to ensure that minority and women owned businesses received access to opportunities at MPEA. She worked tirelessly to ensure that minority and women-owned businesses (M/WBE) received their fare share of contracting opportunities for the organization's $882 million expansion project, resulting in actual M/WBE participation that far exceeded the projects minimum participation goals. At the time, McCullough-Starks reported, "This was the largest public works project in the country."
Following 11 years at the corporation, she accepted her current position at AT&T in 2007, bringing her strong managerial skills to the world of corporate philanthropy and allowing her to put her passion for helping others center stage. At AT&T she has embarked on important public safety awareness campaigns, including the state-wide launch of the company's national no texting while driving campaign titled "It Can Wait." The campaign has had significant inroads in high schools across the state of Illinois, educating young people about the dangers of distracted driving.
Beyond her impressive business pedigree, there’s much for McCullough-Starks to celebrate on the home front as well. This past Valentine’s Day she marked her one year wedding anniversary with husband Alvin Starks. They are proud parents of a blended family including their son Alexander, who is nearly three, Justin, 16, and Eric, 19, a sophomore at Eastern Illinois University.
These days when she isn’t busy helping to run AT&T’s many community outreach initiatives across Chicago, McCullough-Starks enjoys reading, watching movies or partaking in family activities with her sons and husband.
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If you or someone you know is a McKinley College Prep alum, we invite you to join the ASM Alumni Club. Join today to reconnect with other alums, learn about today's program and find out about the latest McKinley events. To join call Kikanza Harris, Office of Development, at 312-385-2013 or visit our Facebook alumni group.
