Sunela Thomas serves as the Ethics & Compliance Director at AT&T’s Chief Compliance Office. In her current role, Sunela oversees the Corporate Compliance Program Office where she manages 33 different Compliance programs - Ethics, Cybersecurity, Sales & Marketing Practices, Drones, Data Protection, Third Party Oversight, Fraud & Identity Protection, Billing Practices, Anti-Bribery & Anti-Corruption, and Global Trade to name some. She serves as an independent advisor to the Chief Compliance Officer. She partners with Business Unit management, Legal and Compliance colleagues to ensure timely identification, mitigation, reporting/escalation of existing, emerging and upstream regulatory/legal/compliance risks and issues. She also partners with the Business in developing policies, procedures, and standards that meet existing and new regulatory requirements and oversees compliance advice and sign off.
She joined AT&T in 2004 in the Audit Services organization where she performed audits, participated in merger integration activities, developed & conducted training in data analytics and performed fraud analysis. She then moved to Finance organization where she was responsible for consolidating IT budget and expenses.
Prior to joining AT&T, Sunela was the Assistant Vice President at Citigroup, NY in their Fraud and Risk Management organization. She received her Master of Science in Computer Science and MBA in Finance & Operations Research. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) and Certified Information System Auditor (CISA). Sunela has been a speaker at the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) Regional conferences. Sunela enjoys volunteering, spending time with friends and family and crafting of all kinds, especially tatting and bobbin lacing.