#WI…About last Week
This is admittedly my first blog post for #WI. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be writing it if my partner wasn’t traveling this week. Fortunately, I have a story to tell about all the progress, revelations, and excitement I experienced last week!
The week of May 6th started out with us learning that #WI accomplished our first successful match. A few weeks ago, we facilitated an introduction of a talented woman of color to a Diversity Recruiter within our Ecosystem. Her education was top tier, her skills were strong, however her resume did not resonate with HR folks who couldn’t see beyond the “key words”. The Diversity Recruiter worked with this talented woman to enhance her resume, connected her with the hiring managers of a Fortune 50 company and the rest is history. She nailed the battery of interviews, tests, etc. and was offered a high-level position. These are the outcomes that #WI envision for the talent and employers in our network.
This high point of the week was followed by inspirational meetings with not one, but two business owners who are have the intention to build diverse teams. As one of the business owners put it, “I want to be intentional about bringing in diverse co-founders and senior leaders because that’s where the real impact into diverse communities flows from”. #WI is helping to find these diverse leaders for this purpose. When we walked into the office of the second business owner, we could already see a good mix of diverse employees, but the owner expressed a desire to mix it up even more! The owner then agreed to allow us to pilot our process within the company. What I found most interesting about both entrepreneurs, although they believed that diversity spurs innovation, they also had a deep belief that giving people of diverse backgrounds an opportunity was just the right thing to do! WOW!
The week ended at the Salon Dinner where I collected focused feedback from a group of awesome people. Advice and questions about our business model, our playbook, our advisory board…lots of things to think about and DO!
As I reflect on last week, I am thankful. I know that our value proposition and service offerings won’t resonate with every business owner, but for those who are interested it seems that a giving nature is part of the equation.
Peace!
