What Is The Secret Weapon Used By Microsoft, Nike, eBay And Facebook To Win The Talent War?
If you are looking for ways to attract top-notch talent, a particularly effective strategy is to look for technology-related conferences that attract sponsorships from leading corporations. When I heard about a conference that had attracted sponsorships from Microsoft, Nike, eBay, Facebook, Target and a number of other sponsors, I decided this would be a good opportunity to scout for some technical and entrepreneurial talent, and for potential speakers for a forthcoming research conference that I am helping to organize.
My strategy paid off: after two days of fantastic presentations and extensive networking opportunities, I was able to secure three new speakers for my conference, and I collected business cards from a large number of highly skilled technical talent, entrepreneurs and media personalities. To give you an idea of the caliber of the presenters, here are brief profiles of six technology leaders who spoke during the event:
- The founder and CEO of The WealthFactory, who among many other distinctions won the Goldman Sachs Portfolio Challenge, launched an app named “best solution in the world for reducing poverty” by JP Morgan Chase, and has been described as “The Next Steve Jobs.”
- The founder and CEO of Bridgestream Software — a company that in just seven years from its creation was sold to Oracle for over $30M — who had been on the executive team of Sybase, later became EVP of Epicor Software, and is now an investor, board member and advisor to tech companies.
- The University Lead for Google Cloud AI and Machine Learning, with a PhD in Aeronautics and Material Science, whose 20-year career has included technology leadership roles at the intersection of academia (Caltech), government (NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy) and now the private sector (Google).
- A tech entrepreneur with degrees from Berkeley and Yale who founded the digital portfolio platform company Pathbrite, which was sold to Cengage Learning in under five years, is an advisor at Pivotal Ventures, an investor with Backstage Capital, and recently left an investor role at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch a Private Equity firm.
- The founder and CEO of Dibs Technology — a company bringing dynamic pricing technology to premium fitness studios — who studied Mathematics, Economics and Computer Science at UCLA, holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, and before becoming an entrepreneur was Director of Data Strategy for the NYC Department of Education.
- The winner of the event’s pitch competition, founder and CEO of VisuWall, an innovative AdTech company that uses machine vision to place advertising in vacant storefront windows, holder of a BA Berkeley, an MS from Georgia Tech, and an MBA from NYU — where she currently holds an adjunct professor position.
In addition to these, the speakers and panelists included a number of other amazing technology leaders, TV personalities, producers, investors, Fortune 500 executives, professors, journalists, editors and award-winning book authors. Needless to say, the caliber and variety of the speakers also attracted a high-caliber audience, with close to 300 highly engaged attendees.
Before clicking to read the second page of this story, close your eyes and try to visualize being at this conference, or mingling with the speakers and organizers at the VIP reception. What do you see? What do the speakers, panelists and VIPs look like?
You may be surprised to find out that all of the people mentioned above, as well as the vast majority of event speakers and attendees, are black women. In particular, the six leaders are Angel Rich, Juanita Lott, Karina Montilla Edmonds, Heather Hiles, Alicia Thomas and Kobi Wu.
The two-day conference, titled Roadmap to Billions — which was fittingly scheduled to span the last day of Black History Month and the first day of Women’s History Month — was the second edition of an event launched last year by Black Women Talk Tech, the brainchild of an amazing trio of black women entrepreneurs: Regina Gwynn of TresseNoire, Esosa Ighodaro of COSIGN, and Lauren Washington of KeepUp App.
The fact that many readers may not have guessed the gender and ethnicity of these outstanding individuals, can be attributed in part to the dearth of black women in leadership roles: with last year’s departure of Ursula Burns as CEO and chairwoman of Xerox, there are currently no black women at the helm of Fortune 500 companies. Even when we look below the pinnacle of corporate leadership, the situation remains bleak: a recent analysis of the 2010 U.S. Census and American Community Survey found that black women make up only 4% of all managerial positions (by comparison, 12.7% of US women identify as black, and another 17.1% as Hispanic or Latina). These dismal numbers mean that we are not accustomed to associating black women with leadership positions — a classical form of unconscious bias that reflects the way our brains store and categorize information based on the information we absorb.
However, there are reasons to believe that the perception of black women as business leaders is bound to improve: in the past decade, black women have been starting new businesses in the U.S. at a faster rate than any other segment of the population, in spite of only securing well under 1% of VC funding. The Roadmap To Billions conference provided clear evidence of this trend: when one of the speakers asked who in the audience was an entrepreneur or was planning to become one, at least two-thirds of the audience raised their hand.
At the upper end of the business spectrum, while the number of black women in corporate leadership positions may be small, a recent study of black women who graduated from Harvard Business School between 1977 and 2015 found that those who have attained top leadership roles “have invested more years in higher education, at more-selective institutions, than their colleagues and their non-African-American classmates.” Through a combination of data analysis and interviews, the study showed that, in the process of dealing with the constant hurdles created by the dynamics of workplace gender and race discrimination, these women have developed an enhanced ability to transform obstacles and roadblocks into opportunities.
Put plainly, as anyone attending Roadmap To Billions would have realized without the need for a research study, black women kick ass– and the presence of so many prominent sponsors suggest that business leaders are starting to figure this out .
If you haven’t had the opportunity to attend Roadmap To Billions or any of the growing number of events that feature black women as speakers, panelists or attendees, you need to start paying attention. The next time you are looking for a board member, an executive, an advisor, a cofounder or a fantastic speaker for an event, you can start with some of the black women described here, or check out the growing list of Awesome Black Women You Should Know that began last year with 28 women and has more than quadrupled since that time.
This article was originally published on Forbes.
