Making the World a Better Place.

Through technology and communication, Gail Chandler and her coworkers at Texas Instruments seem to be changing the world as we know it... right below our noses. As it turns out, there are a number of things we don't know about TI. For instance, only about 5% of their annual revenue comes from selling calculators, or that once a week, a bus picks up volunteers from the TI offices in Dallas and drives them to Julia C. Frazier Elementary School where they tutor in six week rotations, or that with the help of these volunteers, 87% of third graders passed the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test on their first attempt.

Ms. Chandler, a SMU communications alum, works to improve TI's public affairs through community service and philanthropy and in turn makes the world a better place. According to Chandler, the company's legacy through the actions of its founders, Cecil Green and Eric Johnson, has always focused on giving back to its community. She says, "it's ingrained in our culture to be giving and giving back to the community. We have a very stringent corporate governance". As a testimonial to this company's pledge to community relations, a written ethics policy has been in place since the '60s, which was unheard of for the time. 


Going hand in hand with CHandler's efforts in the community, TI's technical efforts run along the same lines. With a Nobel Prize winner in their midsts, the engineering team's goals are to make the world:


SAFER: by attempting to make cars equipped with collision prevention technology and eventually cars that drive themselves.
SMARTER
GREENER: by creating cell phones that will eventually charge on body heat alone
HEALTHIER: through creation of artificial retinas, functioning artificial limbs, and on-site sonograms.

While Chandler says "you wouldn't find TI paying to have their name on the side of the American Airlines Center," that doesn't mean they aren't a huge global presence. Flying under the radar and quietly helping others seems to be right up her ally, and coming from a background in government and educational PR, TI's corporate responsibility initiatives are just what she wants. Chandler claims, "Life is too short to work somewhere you don't like and where you don't feel good about what you're doing."


It's comforting to know that large corporations fueling many of the products people can't seem to live without are making a significant effort to protect the other things we care about. Chandler explains that corporate responsibility, while it is important to the community and government regulations, is good business as well. Companies that buy from TI expect to see a level of awareness and corporate conscience in the companies they associate with, just as TI adopts strict regulations they expect from their suppliers, essentially, being held accountable and by holding their suppliers accountable. All of these features file into the company's statement: "We believe strong companies build strong communities and strong communities build strong companies."