Growing up In Wisconsin, Bill Stemper says the two things people were most passionate about were the Green Bay Packers and Marquette University basketball. “In those times, both of them had very iconic leaders: Vince Lombardi and Al McGuire. They both set incredible expectations with high values.” Stemper attributes much of his own leadership style to the model of these sports legends and his Midwest upbringing.
As a child, Stemper was mechanically inclined, fascinated with taking electrical devices apart. As an amateur radio enthusiast, “you could communicate anywhere in the world for free. I didn’t have the money to buy equipment, so I built my own.” That early interest set him on a natural path toward studying electrical engineering at Marquette, the third generation of his family attending the school. (He met his wife there and their four children all followed the tradition.)
Through a co-op program, Stemper paid for school by working in electrical engineering every other semester. He soon realized that management appealed to him more than being a practicing engineer. Hired into an AT&T management development program, he was in charge of 35 union technicians in downtown Chicago just ten days after graduation. Thrown into the deep end at 23, Stemper says, “you rely on the common sense you grew up with. How do you treat people? These techs are the experts — how am I going to work with them, and learn from them?”
Stemper passed that test and advanced in AT&T’s long distance business. He led sales and product management teams for more than 20 years in jobs that took him, his stalwart wife, Nancy, and their growing family all over the U.S. and overseas. In 2003, Cox Communications approached him with an opportunity to lead Cox Business.
At AT&T, he and his peers were always curious about how cable companies achieved their success, and he was surprised by what he found at Cox. “The culture was so different than what I knew. It was just fantastic to see the free thinking, the openness, the collegialism in these lean companies. I felt it was bringing so much of the better out of me.”
Stemper joined Comcast in 2006 to build its business division, largely from the ground up. At the time, the company’s business clientele was primarily bars and restaurants offering cable TV for diners’ entertainment. Under Stemper’s watch, Comcast Business expanded its offerings, which today include a full suite of connectivity and sophisticated telecommunications solutions serving more than 2.6 million businesses of all sizes and industries — more customers than AT&T, Verizon or any other provider. Stemper’s vision and leadership set Comcast Business on the path to becoming a global company with more than $10 billion in revenue, and still growing.
He retired in 2024 and considers his time with Comcast Business the most enjoyable of his career.
Following Vince Lombardi’s belief in teamwork, he advises, “do what you love, but even more important, do it with people and for people that you really respect. Work with your values, and work with the right people.”
