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When Susan Anable joined Cox Communications in 2001, it was the same year the Atlanta-based company transitioned residential customers to its new iteration of high-speed internet service that would later become an integral connection between homes, schools and businesses.
Since then, Cox Communications has evolved to serve more than 2.5 million customers in the Phoenix area, providing digital television, high-speed internet, home automation systems and digital telephone services.
Anable’s career at Cox has evolved as well over that more than 20-year span. In 2023, Anable was named Phoenix market vice president.
Previously, she held a variety of roles within the company, including vice president of public and government affairs for the Southwest region and manager of government relations.
Prior to joining Cox, Anable was part of the Arizona Senate’s research staff, serving as staff director and natural resources, agriculture and environment analyst.
Anable has her sights set on boosting Cox’s expansion in the Phoenix market to meet growing customer demand for the company’s services, including Cox Mobile, which it launched in 2023.
“When people think of the company, they think of our traditional business lines that we offer: internet, video and telephone,” Anable said. “But we also now have the opportunity to converge products for our customers. You can have home internet with us. You can have a mobile product with us as well. It’s a great convergence within our industry and an opportunity for us to do even more to serve our customers’ needs.”
What career lessons prepared you for your current role at Cox? Communication skills were key to everything I've done in my professional career. Being an effective communicator — whether it’s internally or externally — and being a good writer was also very helpful in my career path as well.
I think probably the consistent thing throughout my career path is curiosity about how things work, whether it was researching legislative proposals when I worked in the Legislature or understanding some of the technology and the operations in our industry.
One of the things I've loved about working for Cox — even though I was in the public and government affairs space for so many years — is that they wanted all of their employees to understand the business, customer expectations and how the technology works.
Now, I’m more on the operations side, supporting our employees, specifically our field technicians that serve our customers. So that curiosity about the broader part of our business helped prepare me for the operations role that I have now.
How does the Valley fit into Cox's growth plans? I'm very happy that I get to work in the Phoenix market because there is still so much organic growth in our community — from residential inflow to new business development. Economic development then drives more people to want to come and live here. Those are ultimately our customers. The businesses that are being created and expanded here are our customers as well.
But in the last two to three years, we've really gotten more focused on actual market expansion. As we’ve looked around our metro Phoenix market, just outside of our service area are communities that we previously haven’t been able to serve. We've taken a fresh look at some of them and decided to expand our network and serve those communities. We've been fortunate enough to have partnered up with communities like Yavapai County.
So we have gotten, I think, more aggressive around looking at opportunities to grow outside our traditional footprint. In the old days in our industry, you grew your networks by acquiring other providers or other networks. Well, there are still areas of this state that are not served with good broadband and there's a huge focus by the state and across the country to try to serve those unserved communities,
What’s a career challenge you’ve encountered and how did you overcome it? I think probably my biggest challenge — and opportunity — is learning to be a better leader. Being a people leader is not always natural for everyone and it's not always easy.
I know I can't be all things to all people. I can't always give people the answer they want to hear, but I can listen, understand and I can be an advocate and help lead people through difficult times.
Certainly, the global pandemic was one of those examples. Never in my wildest imagination would I have expected that in my career path. It was, 'OK, now we’ve got to run a business that everybody needs.' Everybody is working from home. They're learning from home. They're doing telehealth from home and we've got our own workforce we're trying to take care of and make sure they're safe and able to do their jobs. It was very challenging.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Susan Anable
Title: Phoenix market vice president
Company: Cox Communications
Education: Bachelor's degree in journalism, Arizona State University
What activities do you enjoy in your spare time? I love the outdoors and I love to hike, so that's one of my passions. Also, oddly enough, I’m a big opera fan. A group of girlfriends and I have been season ticket holders to the Arizona Opera for 30 years now. It’s just a great way to support the arts and stay connected to some really good friends too.
What’s your favorite motto? John Dutton, a character in the "Yellowstone" TV series, said, “We’re either winning or we’re learning.” I really love that because I believe it’s true. I don't think anything is a loss or a failure if we learn in the process.
