As a proud father, I had the great pleasure and honor of attending my daughter’s hooding ceremony as she and her cohort earned their doctorates in Occupational Therapy. As part of the ceremony each graduate talked briefly about their final capstone project, and as I listened to them, I was struck by the realization that occupational therapists and those in similar professions are some of the hidden angels around us.

There is something beyond special about people who dedicate their lives to helping others. The hidden angels among us get up every day and work with people with the direst of needs. OTs help stroke victims relearn how to feed themselves or button a shirt. They help children with autism learn sensory processing skills to filter out extraneous stimuli. They help people with Parkinson’s disease or cerebral palsy learn ways to remain functional. They help people with behavioral disorders learn to cope when interacting with other people. They help the weakest among us take part in everyday life – and in doing so, they create small miracles every day.

There are many other hidden angels around us who quietly work to make people’s lives better every day. Social workers help people cope with life’s problems. Nurses help us when we’re ailing. Hospice workers ease us when we’re dying.

We also have hidden angels in the broadband industry. This includes the people who have been working tirelessly to enroll people into the ACP low-income broadband plan so they can finally afford broadband. This includes folks who retrofit smartphones and computers so that people who can’t afford them have a way to connect to needed broadband. This includes those who teach people one-on-one or in small classes how to use computers. There are hidden angels working tirelessly to bring functional broadband to the poorest urban neighborhoods, where connectivity is badly needed. There are volunteers who have been working for years to get broadband to remote rural towns and communities that feel cut off from the modern world.

This has led me to think about how everybody concerned with improving broadband also has a little bit of angel in them. This covers a lot of people in the industry. It includes the technician who climbs a pole in the rain to fix a downed fiber line. It includes the policy people who read through reams of FCC filings to make sure that big ISPs and regulators don’t make changes that harm the public. It includes the local ISP manager who works all night to diagnose and repair an electronics problem. It includes the customer service rep who goes the extra mile to help a customer with a problem.

We can also find broadband angels in unexpected places. A lot of ISPs spent a lot of time, energy, and money during the pandemic to get the best broadband they could to those who were forced to work and school from home. There are even broadband angels at the biggest ISPs, which we automatically assume are big impersonal corporations. The low-income programs from companies like Charter and Comcast help a lot of families, and somebody inside the companies had to fight hard to get these plans approved and to make them work.

Thinking about our hidden angels also made me realize that we can all do a little better. It’s easy to forget that the things we do every day in the broadband industry affect real people and real lives. It’s worth taking a little time to remember the impact our jobs have in helping people. Maybe doing that will make it a little easier for each of us to bring out our inner angel a little more often. You should take a little time today to notice the hidden angels around you. Most aren’t looking for thanks – but thank them anyway for making all of our lives better.