-: My passion has always been in diversity and inclusion,
and bringing Black voices to the table,
where the big decisions are being made.
I am the co-founder and president of Black Product Managers,
which was founded in 2017,
as an organization to promote black representation
in product management.
Our main focus is partnering with larger organizations
to help prepare these folks for interviews
and really high-impact roles in tech.
We actually had a member that was previously homeless
a few years ago,
really hit a hard professional spell,
and recently got his dream job in product management,
at a fantastic company,
getting paid salaries
of the top tier in corporate America.
That was a huge standout for me
as I think about the
divide that we're seeing right now
between the haves and the have-nots,
and how it is possible to
close a pretty massive gap
that we're seeing in
the professional world.
And I think this,
person is just a grade A shining example of that.
Four years ago, people were
quite hard-pressed to set explicit goals,
specifically around Black talent,
not just in tech,
but just throughout corporate America.
I think,
now we're seeing a lot more organizations explicitly saying,
no we've identified a gap.
There aren't enough Black folks here,
we have to figure out a way to fill that gap
and measure ourselves against it. At the end of the day,
I think these organizations want
great talent,
and we're really here to tell the story
about why Black talent is special,
and why Black talent should be in your organizations,
and why traditional practices for
hiring and recruiting are flawed.
It's only gotten you thus far and there are other ways
to think about bringing in great people
into your organization.
I would think more radically about
what you really need to do the types of roles
that you have in your organization.
Really just scrap frankly some of the job descriptions
you've been using to date and change them
to be more all encompassing,
to bring in different types of talent.
BCG Digital Ventures taught me a ton
about how to build businesses.
It's why I was attracted to the role to start.
BCG taught me a ton about stakeholder management
and the power of influence,
which, really, I channeled directly
into building out Black Product Managers as an org.