It’s Black History Month!
Let’s reflect back on one of 2019’s transformational experience for Black professionals in Technology.
In October 2019, I attended the BFUTR Tech Summit hosted by the Black Professionals in Technology Network (BPTN) in Toronto. The event had networking opportunities and covered topics ranging from innovation and leadership to career development as led by stalwart industry leaders in Toronto’s tech scene. These were some of my favorite takeaways from the event as an under-10-minute read.
Leadership Moment with Rob Meikle, Executive IT Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group
As the Global VP of Incubation Services and Technology, Rob Meikle presented three lessons to navigate a career in the tech field:
Lesson 1:
Surround yourself with people that lift you up and don’t tear you down. Success is a byproduct of people coming together.
Lesson 2:
Change is inevitable. You cannot control everything around you.
Lesson 3:
Never lose sight of the bigger picture. The technology industry is changing that picture to reflect a job market with a hyper-growth dynamic to support talent.
Leadership matters and is the difference when we look at achieving that bigger picture.
Leadership is not just about competence and skills. It is about character and commitment. Character is demonstrated by integrity (when your actions match your words), heart, and attitude.
Panel: Future of Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity
Here’s a high-level summary of the main insights from this panel.
The panelists emphasized that post-secondary education is important but in this field, companies look for a candidate’s ability to learn and keep up with the latest trends.
It is extremely important to look for work with organizations that have evidence of investing in culture and efforts to support employees on the continuous process of learning in the field.
How do tech companies such as MaRS, TD Bank or Sun Life Financial ensure diversity and inclusion in AI & Cybersecurity?
- We seek opportunities to support and recruit talent at events like BFUTR — acknowledging that there is a diverse pool of candidates at these types of events.
- We focus heavily on removing bias during the application process.
- Managers are responsible for their employees’ experience and growth. It is imperative to ensure that managers have the proper training and are evaluated appropriately to actually display inclusivity.
- From a diversity and tech perspective, Toronto has an exceptionally conducive climate for making all of our diversity, equity, inclusion efforts possible.
Leadership moment with Jennifer Jackson, President, Capital One Canada
As an incredibly successful Black woman in technology, Jennifer Jackson covered the absolutely necessary topic of authenticity in leadership as her keynote. This was the first time I have been in the same room as a Chief Executive Officer in tech who looked like me and shared similar lived experiences as me.
Her talk was inspiring and empowering as she spoke on ways she broke through barriers in the field while preserving her authenticity in every step of her journey. As a Black woman and an early career professional, it was very important for me to be reminded that my experiences, interests, and perspectives are valuable and should be acknowledged as drivers for success rather than a hindrance to upward mobility. This keynote among the many others throughout the Summit affirmed why representation matters in tech and STEM and it is necessary to create spaces like BFTUR to advance equity and inclusion in the field.
These were the key lessons from her experience:
- Be who you are.
- Do not conform to the expectations of others in the workplace. Share your hobbies and interests, and never change the things that are meaningful to you.
- When we become different people, we put up a wall, and your managers likely won’t give you greater opportunities for growth when they feel they do not know you.
- Know your environment.
- When in doubt or not feeling like your true self, remember that you ideally should always feel like you belong.
Leadership moment with Faith Tull, Head of Global Talent, Intelex Technologies
“Be comfortable with being uncomfortable and not being the smartest person in the room. Know thyself and know what you do not know.”
Claudette McGowan, Chief Information Officer, Enterprise Technology Employee Experience, Bank of Montreal
During her talk, Claudette McGowan spoke about thinking beyond the dream. She covered a wide range of topics from personal development to political advocacy to approaches for improving leadership in a group or organization. Here were my three key takeaways:
- When you feel like a fly on the wall in a room where no one looks like you, reimagine how to bring more people to the table. There is no prize in being the only one there.
- Data is the new oil and speed is the new water. You must be fast because there will always be new rules and technology to embrace. We need to think about the opportunities and potential to create and find jobs in companies around new policies and approaches.
For me, this idea spoke to ways data has the potential to advance racial equity. In Canada, many relevant datasets have been missing race-based data making it difficult to hold organizations and institutions accountable to address racial disparities across all parts of society.
However, in the tech industry, the rapid development and use of new technologies have lowered the cost and ease of data processing where we see valuable companies such as Amazon or Google constantly staying up to date on new products or services.
By embracing new mega-trends and approaches to gathering information, we as young professionals have the potential to generate our own businesses and opportunities to ensure more Black and underrepresented individuals have a seat at the table.
3. The Direction Alignment and Commitment (DAC) model is a great tool that can be used for anything in your life. For those in the technology industry, the DAC model offers a systems-based approach in examining how authentic leadership may happen.
The model says there must be a direction in the organization’s purpose, where the interactions among people across all levels are trying to achieve the same goals. This will allow for effective coordination and alignment of different aspects of the work towards the shared vision. As such, the success of the group rather than individual success should be viewed as a personal priority.
By seeking practical evidence of these three components in your organization, it will allow one to discern where leadership is needed and identify the processes and interactions that are producing desired levels of equity and inclusion throughout the organization and its enactment of processes.
She left us to ponder on this quote:
“Do I want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future”
People generally have different experiences, but it is the resilience that differentiates us as Black professionals. We should rely more heavily on this quality because of the frequency in which we have bounced back from obstacles or setbacks rooted in the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, ancestry, and other identities. The term resilience was mentioned quite often at the Summit, making me think more about the power in myself and the Black community to cultivate new culturally responsive policies and programs to address structural racial inequalities in tech.
Panel: Leadership in Tech
Here are some key takeaways from the panelists:
- You need to have self-confidence but also mentors along the way to build that confidence in you
- Mentorship can also come from people who do not look like you but genuinely believe in skills and capabilities
- The panelists also shared their thoughts on the following statement:
“All leaders are generalist, there is no specialist in leadership”
This is was seen to be largely true because leadership is about people and problem-solving. However, the job of a leader is to make sure you have the right people around. It is about relationship management so at its core it can be seen as a generalist but it is a specialist skill.
- When asked how to deal with being the “only one” in the room, one panelist responded
When you are in a position to represent your culture or community, you have to do it even if you feel uncomfortable. Take advantage and own it. There is nothing wrong with pioneering.
The panelists concluded with three pieces of advice for the audience members:
- Be reliable. Being reliable can really help you get ahead.
- There will always be people who want to see you win and people who will not be happy about your wins. For some reason, we tend to focus on people who want to see us fail and project negativity.
- Focus on the people who acknowledge your wins to unleash and maximize your potential.
Keynote by Arlan Hamilton, Founder and Managing Partner, Backstage Capital
Be yourself and the right people will find you.
Leadership moment with Dennis Mitchell, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, Starlight Capital
Peer-to-peer networking is more powerful than connecting with CEOs and COOs because when it is time to pitch ideas, it is these relationships you want to leverage — “network across” rather than “up”.
The final theme of the Summit was Marketing and Customer Focus, which entailed a spontaneous and interactive Keynote by Justina Omokhua, Senior Vice President of Endeavor Brand Marketing. In a creative manner, her talk celebrated the success of young professionals she had met earlier, highlighting the brilliance in the room to be tapped into. The keynote was followed by a panel discussion on the topic of marketing and customer focus.
The BFTUR Summit was a well-needed space for Black professionals to learn, connect, and empower one another. It revealed that we are not in this journey alone but there is a community in Toronto with so much potential to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech space. All in all, BFTUR allowed me to envision and construct a future where Black professionals across all industries will begin (if not already) to see themselves free from white supremacy and oppression.
I look forward to BFUTR 2020 and BPTN’s upcoming Black History Month event “The Future of Tech is: Black!” happening on February 13th at the MARS Discovery District.
