The Magnolio Times — An Origin Story
Origin stories are a funny thing. I suppose their simplicity and consistency are why I love Marvel movies. For those of you who don’t know anything about Marvel movies and superheroes, you should know that every hero has an origin story. That story generally follows an arc that looks… like… this….
The funny thing about origin stories is that when you are in the midst of it you don’t feel like a hero, you don’t feel like a leader, you don’t feel like a founder. You’re just a person seeing a problem, and you’re trying to do whatever you can to solve that problem. For most people that take the Hero’s Journey, it was something that just kind of happened to them. To a rare few individuals, it was something they were actively pursuing. I was actually on the completely opposite end of the spectrum. I was actively trying to never take that journey.
Back in 2017, I released a hip-hop album where a good portion of the songs discussed trials and tribulations of being Black while working in tech. The most popular song on that album was all about my realization that we all have the capacity to be a hero, but I was flat out refusing to do so.
I was in a helluva mood when I wrote that song, and it’s interesting to me because so many people tell me it’s their favorite song on the album. So to some extent, I think a lot of people have felt this way at a point in their lives. Still, the story of how the person who wrote that song ended up partnering with one of the most remarkable women I have ever met to try and fundamentally transform how business resource groups make their impact in the world is pretty dope. I hope the lesson that you all will take from this story is that each and every one of you is a hero in the making.
Ordinary World
In the fall of 2019 I was feeling a bit stuck, stagnant. I’d spent the last 18 months taking trips all over the world about every 3 months. I went to places like Australia, Nicaragua, Spain, France, Mexico, Portugal, and England. I was fortunate enough to be able to take all those trips because of the company I work at, Sprout Social. Still, I wasn’t feeling very fulfilled in my role, and I was starting to feel like I was living for vacations.
That can be fine for a season of your life, but I hold the mindset that if you’re living for weekends and vacations then you should probably be making moves to start a new job or career. Those options were definitely weighing on my mind, but there were other things to consider.
I wanted to finish my part-time MBA program at Kellogg before taking on all that comes with starting a new gig, at a new company, with new coworkers. I had mixed feelings about leaving my product team at Sprout. I also wasn’t sure I was going to find the fulfillment I needed by simply changing jobs and companies.
The Call and The Refusal
Let’s flashback to a year prior, 2018. I was sitting in a lunch meeting with a good portion of the other Black individuals that worked at Sprout Social. The meeting room itself was called Al-Fihri, named after an Arab Muslim woman, Fatima Al-Fihri. Back in the 800s, she was the first person to found a degree-awarding university in history. In the midst of our casual monthly lunch meeting more than 1200 years later, we were discussing our transition into an official Business Resource Group and how to provide continuing education and development for our members.
Our DEI director, Michelle Y. Bess, was in the meeting and asked for three people to step up to lead the organization. I did that thing where you look up and away from the table, hope you don’t accidentally make eye contact, and get asked to do it. Thankfully two remarkable women stepped up to the plate.
There was a second request to have someone step up into the third leadership position. This time they specifically called out that it would be nice to have a male also step up to be a part of the leadership team. I did that thing where you look down and below the table, hope you don’t accidentally make eye contact, and get asked to do it. Thankfully a young and gregarious gentleman volunteered to take the role.
I remember thinking about the responsibilities I had managing my product team at work, all the extra work I had to do for grad school at Kellogg, and my personally rocky transition into working within the authority and political structure of Sprout Social as reasons why I shouldn’t have stepped up to lead. There’s always a “reason” to refuse the call. Look for the reason not too.
The Mentor and the Threshold
Now we flash-forward to October of 2019. I was sitting at Sprout HQ office one day that fall and an email came through from a coworker of mine, Kristen Rice. She was the lead for our Business Resource Group, Black @ Sprout, and the email was addressed to all of the members. She was reminding us all to apply to be leads for Sprout. It was her second time sending the email.
I told myself it couldn’t hurt to simply apply, and I could always choose to not take on the role once I learned more about it. I opened the link to the application, quickly filled out the form, and moved on with my day. Sometime later I got an email invite from Kristen to discuss things.
When I sat down in the meeting to discuss my application for the role. Kristen immediately launched into an explanation of how things had been going for her as the lead for Black@ Sprout over the last few months. She then pivoted to discuss all the things that we needed to accomplish before the end of the year (it was late October). The certainty with which she was speaking about me doing the work had stirred a feeling of confusion in me as I thought this was an interview for the role.
So I asked Kristen about the other applicants. There were no other applicants. Employees who had been at Sprout less than 6 months were not eligible to lead BRGs. Most of the employees that would have been eligible to lead Black@ Sprout had left recently. We had a churn problem. As the newly appointed co-lead to Black@ Sprout it was my job to get that problem fixed. Remember when I thought I could always choose to not take on the role once I learned more about it. Good mentors don’t give you the opportunity to opt-out of growth opportunities. Kristen had decided to be my good mentor.
Tests, Allies, and Enemies, Oh My!
To solve this churn problem we were going to have to change mindsets and recondition heart muscles. Kristen and I were going to need some friends. So over the last 6 weeks of 2019, we embarked on a journey of interviewing almost every single black person that worked at Sprout to hear their stories about how they ended up at Sprout, and what were their hopes, dreams, and aspirations. This experience was a watershed moment for me. I had spent so much time focused on how little society likes to give to me as a black person, that I had completely lost track of my own capacity to seek out, support, and give to those people in my own community who could use a helping hand.
We landed on the idea to pivot our BRG leadership model to be a design team. We believed that design was about problem-solving, and giving our Black@ leadership team exposure to these skills while attempting to overcome abstract and systemic business problems would position them for success for the remainder of their careers. We spent days preparing the pitch deck we would present to recruit our friends as allies. There was just one slight hiccup. The day we were pitching the idea to the rest of the BRG our company decided to go public and celebratory Mimosas and Bloody Mary’s were flowing like water.
A couple of celebratory mimosas and a surge of emotional energy at 9 am will have you feeling exhausted by noon, which was when our BRG meeting to pitch the leadership model was happening. One of our Brand Design Leads, Justin Woods, jokingly told me that right before I started the pitch it did not look like it was going to go well, but I ended up pulling it off. We got about four people to apply immediately. That was good, but we needed more.
I had a follow-up conversation with Amber Washington, a brilliant Black woman, who leads the Women@ Sprout BRG. She let me know that the idea was so transformative that people weren’t going to think they were the right individuals for the leadership roles. With this critical insight, Kristen and I began to reach out to members individually, pounded the pavement grassroots style. We let them know the individual traits, characteristics, and qualities we had discovered about them during our interviews with them. Then we asked them to join the leadership team in roles that aligned with those skills. In the end, we were able to recruit 40% of our BRG to join the team. I am so incredibly thankful that they were willing to put their trust in Kristen and me.
Approaching The Dragon’s Den
The thankfulness was unfortunately shortlived. The realization that all of these individuals had put their trust in me, had kicked off a level of anxiety I had never before experienced in my life. I started thinking, “What happens if I fail them?”
A second wave of emotion rode in on a chariot with trumpets blaring. Shame.
I felt shame because at that moment I realized my own lack of empathy towards the pressure and the weight my old boss had been experiencing during that time she was leading a fashion tech startup while I worked there. To some extent, for the same reasons, I even felt ashamed for not fulling understanding this in regards to the CEO of the company I currently worked at.
When you get caught up experiencing things like anxiety, fear, shame it is so incredibly easy to fall into the trap of paralysis and inaction. I learned from Chandler Bing while watching episodes of Friends growing up in the 90s that when you feel like you’re not equipped to handle an emotional situation you should make a joke.
I thought about how often I felt like a failure during my time struggling through unemployment in the great recession. I thought about how all of those banks got giant bailouts because they were “Too big to fail”. Then it hit me, “Chris…, You’re too Black to fail.”
My father is a Nigerian-American immigrant who grew up in Patani, Delta State, Nigeria in a single-parent home. He emigrated from Nigeria to the States for college. He got a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and spent over 20 years working as an engineer at Kodak.
My Mother is a Black Woman from Nashville, TN who went to UT Knoxville a few years after desegregation. Actively discouraged by many of her professors for being Black and a woman in pre-med, she would eventually get a B.S. in Health Sciences, an M.A in Diversity & Liberal Studies, and spend the bulk of her career teaching children Health and Science in the city of Rochester, NY.
Luckily, my parents taught me some things too. When the going gets tough, it does not matter, because you should have already been working. Get to work. Keep Working.
The Dragon
Black history month was approaching quickly. One of the key things you do as a Sprout Social BRG is to manage the pride month of our Affinity Group. For us, it was Black History Month. Responsibilities would include office decorations, partnering with marketing on internal and external comms, and hosting various events throughout the month. The biggest of these events is our company-wide Town Hall at the end of the month we call the DEI Guild.
The next few lines are going to read like the introductory plot to a Bring It On sequel. Our team’s performance in the DEI Guild had been somewhat rocky each of the previous years. This was because of three main challenges:
- We had fewer people to ideate, plan, and manage because we were smaller than other BRGs.
- We had less time to figure out what to do because new BRG leaders start in November each year.
- We had poor handoffs between leadership teams due to our employee retention problems because our BRG leaders would leave the company for other companies before their terms were up.
Kristen and I had a meeting with Michelle Bess, our DEI Director, to discuss initial ideas for the DEI Guild Town Hall. The ideas that were floating around included outside speakers, a panel discussion, and a presentation on the 200 year anniversary of Blacks getting the right to vote with the 19th amendment.
I liked the idea of our fellow employees seeing black excellence by an outside individual speaker, but I wanted them to see that black excellence come from their Black peers in our organization. I liked the idea of fellow employees experiencing different Black perspectives with a panel discussion, but I wanted to ensure they had a clarity of perspective that I often feel is lost in the varying levels of preparedness of panel members. I loved how passionate our DEI Director was about the bi-centennial of the 19th amendment, but the only thing I could authentically say about it is that I’m happy I got the right to vote. So we went with Lightning Talks.
Lightning Talks are when 3–4 people give 7–10 minute back to back talks about a single or closely related topic(s) so that to the crowd it feels a little bit like lightning is rapidly striking as they listen to each bolt of lightning educate them on a new topic. We’d get the benefit of Black Excellence by individual speakers. We’d get the benefit of the diverse perspectives that come from the panel, and we’d get the benefit of passion and authenticity because each speaker would choose a talk that showed their passion in an authentic way.
The Ordeal
I didn’t articulate any of that when I convinced Michelle and Kristen we would do this. I didn’t know how to. I was operating on instinct. I saw the confidence in Kristen about her ability to deliver. I could sense the fear and hesitation in Michelle’s voice because of the three challenges I mentioned earlier. My gut was telling me it was the best and only option given those challenges we were facing. I’m thankful that Michelle put her trust in Kristen and me.
We were able to recruit Romaine Buck, our Customer Success Director, to join us and make a trio of lightning talks. Me… Romaine… Kristen. We spent the next four weeks iterating and collaborating on our lightning talks. At one point I heard a story so impactful I nearly fell out of my seat, but the emotional toll it would have taken to tell that story in front of 500 people would have been far too great of a burden to bear.
The day of the DEI Guild meeting finally came. I had slept terribly the night before. I didn’t have much of an appetite all-day. The giant glass of cold brew I drank before the Guild meeting was making me feel more nauseous than alert. But in those tough times, none of that mattered, because Kristen, Romaine, and I had already been working.
When it was over, it felt like we had delivered black excellence, but one can never be too sure. It wasn’t until I began to hear an outpouring of positive feedback from our BRG members, other teammates, and people I had never met before that I felt like we had finally slain the dragon. It was time to celebrate our treasure, which was getting back to work with our larger Black@ Design Leadership team. I’d do it right after a quick three-day visit to decompress in Mexico!
Seizing the Treasure
One day after I got home from Mexico COVID-19 finally stormed the United States. We were sent to work from home with no set date of ever returning to the office. This was going to be problematic for our Black@ Design team because all of the plans we had for enhancing the employee experience revolved around gathering and meeting face-to-face. All of our plans for recruiting new Black talent we’re dead in the water because Sprout was no longer hiring for new positions. It could have been far worse though. At least we all still had our jobs.
When the world went home we decided to go simple. Previously we had 8 or more complex initiatives we were trying to accomplish across recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and development. Our brand design team focused on creating a brand identity to launch our new blog, The leadership principles that this team collaboratively came up with are principles that have changed how I work since the day we decided upon them. Our Product design team is leading Black@ Chats to help enhance the employee experience. They are creating space for authentic conversations about career development and how it relates to the Black Experience. These Chats have been creating a deeper connection within our community as we march on our never-ending journey to Black Tech-cellence.
I was basking in the Joy of our first-ever Black@ Chat. Then came Breanna Taylor. Then came Ahmaud Arbery. Then came George Floyd.
With millions of people not working because of job loss during a global pandemic, the entire world took to the streets to create a movement.
My co-lead Kristen Rice lead the creation of an Open Letter from Black@ Sprout that our CEO shared with our whole company, and it was pushed out all over the world through social networks. This wasn’t how I saw our year going. The positive and powerful response to the open letter was never anything that I asked for or expected. However, it was the treasure that we needed, so it was the treasure life gave us.
The Road Block
June marked the third straight month of shelter-in-place. Like most people in the world I was mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. June also meant it was pride month for the LGBTQIA+ BRG and they were to lead the Guild Meeting. The initial plan was for them to lead a talk on how differently the world treated AIDS vs COVID-19 because AIDS adversely affected people of color and people of their community. They had one big hurdle though. The entire world was still either watching or participating in Black Lives Matter protests.
If we prided ourselves on DEI in our organization we couldn’t have a DEI meeting in the middle of the biggest sociopolitical movement in our generation and not discuss the protests. I had one big challenge though. I didn’t want to do it. I was tired. I didn’t think I had it in me. I could tell Kristen was tired too.
Then I remembered one of the leadership principles that our Black@ leadership team had created. Give Boldy. When you know that you should give, but feel like you don’t want to, that is when you should give the most.
It was a group effort. The LGBTQIA+ BRG shared the context of Black Trans individuals who were being murdered by police, we at Black@ gave a talk on Systemic Racism as a business and how it all connects to what we were seeing in that moment, and the other BRGs all shared letters of solidarity. It was a really powerful way to end our third month of quarantine.
The Ressurection and The Boon
After my talk for the Pride Month DEI Guild meeting, I was emotionally spent. I had used two very personal stories from my life to try and illustrate the complexities of systemic racism to about 500 people in my company. I gave the talk alone in my apartment because we were working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I had practiced it alone an obscene amount of times the night before to prepare for the meeting. Still, there’s nothing like the actual experience of sharing that emotional content in real-time.
As the rest of the meeting continued I had to turn off my video camera. I found myself having to fight back tears, and it was a fight I was losing. There were fewer tears of sadness, and more tears from being emotionally overwhelmed. It was an emotional experience I was not used to dealing with. I took the next four days off of work to recoup and clear my head.
When I finally opened up my Slack app to get back to work what I experienced was a flood of love and support from all different kinds of people that worked at Sprout Social. They told me all of the different ways that my talk had impacted their lives and perspectives. I once again found myself fighting back tears each time I opened the next message.
I was incredibly grateful for the messages. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that you’re work had an impact. The lessons I’ve learned and relearned over the course of this experience are the real boon, the real treasure, and the inspiration for why we launched Magnolio Times.
- When you know that you should give, but feel like you don’t want to, that is when you should give the most.
- If your past is starting to paralyze you with negative emotions then lean into your values and your work ethic to push forward towards positivity.
- Good mentors don’t give you the opportunity to opt-out of growth opportunities.
- Everyone is a hero when they use their power to create opportunities for others.
Some of you may be wondering where the name the Magnolio times comes from. We wanted to select a name that was true to our roots as a business resource group of Sprout Social. We also wanted a name that would reflect the diversity in this world that we want so many people to embrace. The word “Magnoliophyta” is the most diverse plant species in the world. We shortened it to Magnolio, we then joined it with the word “Times” to pay tribute to the fact that a small group of journalists at the New York Times were able to create a newspaper that had the power to change the direction of history in many ways. So to us, the name Magnolio Times means, “The Diverse Times.” I hope you will embrace our stories.
