Complete Story
05/31/2017
Toni Stubbs is a leader in a male dominated field | First person
TONI STUBBS’ CAREER PLANS TOOK A SHARP LEFT TURN AND LED HER TO WHERE SHE IS TODAY.
Not only is she the only female in her role in Virginia, but also nationwide.
The vice president of technology engineering and operations for Cox Virginia started out with dreams of becoming a lawyer.
“My 10th-grade history teacher told me I would never make a good lawyer because I didn’t retain history well enough,” said Stubbs, now 49, who wanted so badly to be an attorney. “Every free period I had I’d go to the school library and read and try to memorize things. Part of my motivation was to prove this history teacher wrong, too.”
On one of those daily trips to the library in her hometown of Detroit, Stubbs became distracted by a box sitting in the corner. The librarian told Stubbs it was a donated computer and she had no idea what to do with it.
“I asked if I could read the books and see if I could figure it out,” Stubbs said. “I got the computer up and working and she said to me, wow, you’re really good at that. You would do really well with computers.”
That’s when Stubbs’ career dreams changed.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and software engineering from Mercy College of Detroit and a master’s in business administration from the University of Michigan. She completed the CTAM Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School and graduated from the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute.
