Social Impact Tech: Odie Gray of The Diversity Cyber Council On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
Everyone is busy, but not everyone is productive. If you have reached your peak of utilization and 10% or more is not allocated in recruiting support in the form of expanding your team or new partnerships, I promise you that you are not nearly as productive as you imagine yourself to be.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Odie Gray.
Odie Gray is a military veteran and former technology consultant turned founder of the nonprofit Diversity Cyber Council. He now works to establish equitable and systematic paths towards opportunities in tech for the under-represented through his organization’s training programs, initiatives, and campaigns.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
My childhood was a bit rough. I was raised about 30 minutes outside of the southside of Chicago and dealt with my parents splitting at an early age along with my mother giving me up at 13. While my grandmother raised me, I remember often not having more than a dime to my name for the first 17 years of my life. I remember getting kicked out of high school my senior year. I’ve come a long way since then and my story is the driving force behind the change I make today.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The most interesting story from my career stems from the time I sued a former employer for racial discrimination. While I felt it was valid and warranted, I lost the case. At first, I thought the case had ruined my career but it pivoted me toward entrepreneurship. I wasn’t to advocate for myself and that is a central component of the Diversity Cyber Council’s mission.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My grandmother. She was a sassy woman from the south of Mississippi who raised 13 kids on her own plus me. I knew I let her down when I was kicked out of high school and she passed shortly after. So, I wake up everyday with a promise to be the best of myself and hope that is enough repayment for her unconditional love.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote’’? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Don’t just stay true to yourself, stay true to your growth.” I joke that that’s my quote, copyright and trademark. The quote exemplifies my other favorite quote, “The only constant in life is change.” I know that everything changes so I can’t stay true to a static idea of myself. I stay true to the version of myself that has outgrown yesterday’s version. I also believe in being a lifelong learner and developing myself in all core areas.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Resilience and perseverance because resistance is guaranteed. Leadership because you need to convince people to follow your vision who are more talented than you. Discernment because leadership and salesmanship are not the same.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
Spotlight is the bridge between community and social impact by solving the lack of accessibility and visibility of services that can improve the condition of livelihood for low to moderate income households. Spotlight is relevant and timely because we know in Georgia alone there are over 45k nonprofit organizations yet the wealth gap disparity continues to grow and getting help as a resident in an under-served community continues to be a struggle.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Spotlight is a mobile application that proactively matches social impact services like childcare, housing, financial support, workforce training, etc. with people in need within the community.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
Imagine being a high school drop out with no family or financial support now being tasked with finding a way to sustain a livelihood. I had no idea where to begin, who I could trust, or who even wanted to help. At that time, I had no idea about social impact organizations or that the free services they offered would drastically improve my situation. So many people go unserved because of lack of visibility on available opportunities. Now in my journey as a nonprofit founder, I realize to truly help the community we have must serve as a community through strategic collaboration and partnerships that reinforce impact and highlight opportunity.
How do you think this might change the world?
By streamlining access to services to people that need it the most, we can replicate this system on a national or global level and quite literally transform lives one service at a time.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
More than bad tech, I think there are bad systems that are designed or exploited by groups of bad people that lead to bad results. Remember technology is nothing without an end user. We need to look ourselves in the mirror as to why we are not holding tech companies accountable for how tech is being leveraged.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
- Have KPIs that objectively quantify your impact.
- Money is not a KPI, think what the investment of money results in, specifically the outcome for the people you serve.
- Consider impact as currency and the life blood to your business. An exemplary story for the first three points would be the majority response from Corporate America regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The companies that put up the effort to invest did so in a way that did not address the heart of the problem, instead of creating more equitable paths to hiring and promotions for diverse professionals, they doubled down on advertising to showcase they understand the problem and stood up employee resources groups which has an illusionary attempt to fix a non-inclusive culture not interested in doing business with people of color, ala supplier diversity programs. The objective impact, if any, is narrated from the perspective of someone not affected by the problem which is so bad a failure in respect to the call to action and cause, I would hope it was designed to fail versus it being a sincere attempt towards progress due to how tone deaf it all has turned out to be.
- Everyone is busy, but not everyone is productive. If you have reached your peak of utilization and 10% or more is not allocated in recruiting support in the form of expanding your team or new partnerships, I promise you that you are not nearly as productive as you imagine yourself to be.
- Collaboration and partnerships are more valuable than a single award, you will go further together. I would rather have ten small clients paying me $10k each versus one large client paying me 100k. Why? The diversification of experiences, business cases, performance history, product/service validation, relationships, and lessons learned will prove more valuable over time. Remember this every time you go hunting for those big fish clients, smaller fish will teach you what you need to attract those bigger fish.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Look within to find yourself and your purpose. Live your life to generate impact as best as you can by starting small then letting it guide you to greater things. Also, never be fearful of failure or internalize rejection. You are worthy of love and success so live in a way that demonstrates this.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Sean (Jay-Z) Carter
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
