ATLANTA, June 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Becky Blalock, senior vice president and chief information officer of Southern Company, has received the 2007 CIO of the Year award from the Computers for Youth organization. This award recognizes social responsibility among information technology executives. The winner is chosen by a panel of former information technology executives from corporations such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Goldman-Sachs and Marsh, Inc. Blalock was selected to receive the award based her philanthropic work and her contribution to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and TechBridge, a nonprofit that helps other charities leverage technology to better support the people they serve.

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"Southern Company commends Becky for the work that she does to positively impact our company and the communities we serve," said Anthony James, Southern Company executive vice president and president of shared services. "This award compliments her role as a leader and represents her commitment to improve the educational future of generations to come."

As senior vice president and chief information officer, Blalock directs information technology strategy and operations across the 120,000 square miles and nine subsidiaries of Southern Company. She leads more than 1,000 employees and her responsibilities encompass infrastructure, networks, desktops, applications and cyber security.

Blalock serves as chair of Leadership Atlanta, chair of the technology fundraising committee of the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta and the IT advisory board for Georgia State University. In 2005 and 2006, she helped raise more than $1 million each year for TechBridge as co-chair of the Digital Ball. In addition, she served on the YWCA of Greater Atlanta board for seven years and was inducted into the 2005 Atlanta YWCA Academy of Women Achievers.

With 4.3 million customers and more than 42,000 megawatts of generating capacity, Atlanta-based Southern Company is the premier energy company serving the Southeast, one of America's fastest-growing regions. A leading U.S. producer of electricity, Southern Company owns electric utilities in four states and a growing competitive generation company, as well as fiber optics and wireless communications. Southern Company brands are known for excellent customer service, high reliability and retail electric prices that are significantly below the national average. Southern Company has been listed the top ranking U.S. electric service provider in customer satisfaction for seven consecutive years by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Visit our Web site at http://www.southerncompany.com/.

Computers for Youth (CFY), a non-profit organization launched in 1999, is the leader in improving the home learning environment of middle school children from low-income families. CFY selects public schools with high poverty statistics and then offers all the sixth graders and their parents a free computer-based home learning center, which they are taught to use at a Family Learning Workshop before taking it home. CFY targets sixth grade in order to intervene just as children's disengagement from family and school begins. The home learning centers come with Internet access, award-winning educational software, tailored web content, and ongoing tech support. CFY provides additional training to support parents as learning partners and help teachers strengthen the home-school connection. CFY's programs improve student engagement (two-thirds of children surveyed report working harder in school), student performance (three-quarters of children consistently report that having a home learning center helps them do better in school) and parental involvement (more than 90% of parents feel more confident in helping their children learn). CFY has also begun working on a broader scale to improve educational software for the home and influence education policy for both local and national audiences. CFY currently serves families in New York and Philadelphia and is expanding to three more cities over the next few years. CFY is now also launching an affiliate network of like-minded organizations which will be provided with products and services designed to improve home learning environments for youth across the country. In 2007 CFY will serve its 10,000th family. For more information, visit http://www.cfy.org/.

CONTACT: Amoi S. Geter of Southern Company, +1-404-506-5333,
+1-866-506-5333, or media@southerncompany.com

Web site: http://www.southerncompany.com/
http://www.cfy.org/