Lois Kathryn Herr (1941-) joined Bell Laboratories in 1964, and, during her twenty-six-year career with Bell and AT&T, she was a prominent advocate for women's rights in the workplace.

Born in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1941, Herr earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Elizabethtown College and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After teaching seventh-grade English for a year, she joined Bell Laboratories as a technical editor. While seeking career advancement, she became aware of the inequities present in Bell's treatment of male and female employees. As she continued to work for Bell while completing MBA coursework at the University of Chicago, she joined the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). In late 1970, Herr established a Women's Rights Committee at Bell Labs with a statement of purpose that included plans, as she later documented in her book, to take action "to change discriminatory and demeaning attitudes and behavior." With its more academic focus than other parts of the Bell System, the committee found that Bell Labs was a "relatively easy environment in which to talk about controversial topics."

As Herr was forming the committee, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) intervened when the Bell System sought approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a long-distance rate increase. The EEOC had been established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to investigate acts of discrimination in the workplace, but it lacked enforcement powers. At the time, AT&T and the Bell System was the largest non-government employer in the United States. Taking advantage of the timing of Bell's request, the EEOC charged that, by discriminating, AT&T was economically inefficient and was not entitled to the rate increase. NOW and other civil rights organizations supported the EEOC's move. The FCC separated the rate increase request from the EEOC charge and established a separate document to investigate the EEOC's charges against AT&T. After learning of the case, Herr and other AT&T employees supported the EEOC's efforts to change the Bell System's attitudes and practices from within the company.

The case was settled in 1973, and Herr later documented the history of the case and her involvement in her 2003 book Women, Power, and AT&T: Winning Rights in the Work Place. From 1974 to 1975, she served as a Presidential Interexchange Executive in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Throughout her career, Herr held various managerial positions before retiring from NYNEX, one of AT&T's divested units, in 1990. She then returned to Lancaster County, where she owned and operated a small farm. From 1993 to 2003, she taught business courses and served as Director of Marketing and Public Affairs at Elizabethtown College. She published a second book, Dear Coach: Letters Home from World War II, in 2009, which includes letters sent from soldiers to Herr's father, Ira, a long-serving coach and founder of the athletic program at Elizabethtown College. She has been active in volunteer service and politics, continuing to work with organizations that protect and promote women's rights in the workplace.