Roy Wilkens, EE’66, and Mario A. Padilla, MetE’60, worked for years to challenge and change the status of the telecommunications industry in the early to mid 1990s.
Wilkens, founder, president and CEO of telecommunications company WilTel, worked to challenge and outpace the “big three” at the time of AT&T, MCI and Sprint. His 3,500 employees worked with business communications to provide network solutions. “All I had was a gimmick to start out with, and that was putting fiber inside a pipe,” says Wilkens about his fiber-optics cable project that turned into a company.
Padilla was vice president of new markets business development for AT&T in Morristown, N.J. He stated in 1993 to Missouri S&T Magazine that “we have come to the age of The Jetsons,” when referring to a communications revolution that would affect our life as dramatically as interstate highways or televisions.
For some, it is hard to imagine a life without the communication devices we have today, but perhaps future Miners can pick up the mantle of the two and continue to develop new technologies.
Share This Story
Spark a Memory?
Share your story! Fill out the form below to share your fondest memory or anecdote of S&T. If you'd prefer not typing, you can also share by phone at 833-646-3715 (833-Miner150).
Abby (Pittroff) and Ryan Riess
Student athletes Abby (Pittroff) and Ryan Riess met in August 2002 outside the campus’s Rayle Cafeteria. “I thought to myself,…
Taking S&T to dizzying heights
The snows of Kilimanjaro have been touched by Missouri S&T. Sarah Taylor, a 2001 graduate in electrical engineering, and her…
Megan (Jekel) and Jonathan Pardeck
Megan (Jekel), a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, and Jonathan Pardeck, a member of Kappa Alpha fraternity, met through…
NIH’s first woman scientist
Dr. Ida Bengtson was the first woman the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hired as a scientist in 1916. For…
Inventing the future at ‘the idea factory’
In the 1950s, AT&T Bell Labs was a hotbed of innovation, a place where engineers and theorists came together to…
Setting new trends
Tamiko Youngblood, MinE’92, MS EMgt’94, PhD EMgt’97, was a woman of many “firsts.” She was the first African American woman…