Speaker 1: I think the first thing is first, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't get around this. You have to be good at
Speaker 1: what you do, Like you have to invest in learning
Speaker 1: what you're really good at and just doing that to
Speaker 1: the best of your ability. Like that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that that's the one impression that you're gonna make with
Speaker 1: most people, They're gonna remember, did you say what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do? You ran that of event and it went
Speaker 1: really well.
Speaker 2: You were, you know, on time.
Speaker 1: You know, you communicate, Like just be a good whatever
Speaker 1: you want to be in the world, Like, just be
Speaker 1: good at that.
Speaker 3: I'm will Lucas missus Black Tech, Green Money. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of
Speaker 3: the brightest minds and brilliant ideas.
Speaker 2: If you're black in.
Speaker 3: Building, are simply using texta security you back, this podcast
Speaker 3: is for you.
Speaker 4: Jeroni Petty is founder and CEO at color.
Speaker 3: Stack, the nonprofit Colici organization that helps black lots of
Speaker 3: next computer science students.
Speaker 4: Get degreed and hired.
Speaker 3: When he was at Cornell, he worked as an intern
Speaker 3: at Google and later turned him down for a full
Speaker 3: time gig to start his own entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 4: We've had so many.
Speaker 3: Conversations nationwide about the pipeline for black talent and tech.
Speaker 4: I wanted to get an idea of its current state.
Speaker 4: To Aran, who works on this issue every day, provides
Speaker 4: enough date.
Speaker 2: When you look at the data, it's about thirty percent.
Speaker 1: You know, back in Latin next, computer science students or
Speaker 1: people make up thirty percent of the population, twenty percent
Speaker 1: of CS grads, and about.
Speaker 2: Ten percent of the industry.
Speaker 1: So there's drop offs at each level where you could
Speaker 1: say not enough students are graduating with CS degrees to
Speaker 1: begin with, but also from the ones that are, they're
Speaker 1: not getting jobs in software right, they're maybe going into
Speaker 1: it or becoming a teacher or doing something that they
Speaker 1: weren't intending to do.
Speaker 2: So we're trying to solve.
Speaker 1: This like multi layered problem of like access to jobs, placement, retention,
Speaker 1: and then even attraction to bring that twenty percent to
Speaker 1: thirty percent right at the onset.
Speaker 3: Do you see enough black students interested in computer science?
Speaker 1: So I studied CS myself, right, So I was a
Speaker 1: csgrad and so when I was on campus, the whole
Speaker 1: reason I started doing this work was because I did
Speaker 1: see that I did see the interest but what you
Speaker 1: would find is that even in that intro course. At
Speaker 1: a lot of these universities, the intro course is in
Speaker 1: the intro course, you know, they kind of gotten so
Speaker 1: used to these people that come in and have been
Speaker 1: learning how to study, how to code and program from
Speaker 1: when they were in middle school. So the professors, I
Speaker 1: think have adapted for the wrong reasons and have now
Speaker 1: expected so much prior knowledge where black students, Brown students
Speaker 1: are going into these intro courses and they feel behind,
Speaker 1: and once they get a backgrade on that first test
Speaker 1: or project, they're dropping the class, They're dropping the major.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I was reading something a different interview you were
Speaker 3: doing it. You were talking about your personal mission that
Speaker 3: you found many of your peers owner parts in these classes,
Speaker 3: weren't doing well in these classes. And you talked about
Speaker 3: this as pervasive and why is that pervasive? Like many
Speaker 3: would say, we just aren't as talented or you know,
Speaker 3: we don't have the proclivity for math and science. Well,
Speaker 3: in your research and in your work, what have you
Speaker 3: found to be the reasons why we are not ready
Speaker 3: for these classes in so many respects?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the first thing is definitely, you know
Speaker 1: what I just mentioned about prior knowledge, like if you
Speaker 1: didn't go to if you didn't go to that private school,
Speaker 1: right that had CS one on one as a freshman, Right.
Speaker 1: I think public education is just catching up to c
Speaker 1: US education and baking that into the curriculum for high schools.
Speaker 1: But if you either didn't if you didn't go to
Speaker 1: a school that had the coursework, or you had a
Speaker 1: family friend that just was able to expose you to
Speaker 1: that at a young age, you are coming in at
Speaker 1: a college level feeling so behind. So there's that there's
Speaker 1: that mental kind of barrier where you just are not
Speaker 1: as confident when you're going into your first intro course
Speaker 1: and everybody else seems to know everything that's already like
Speaker 1: from day one, you're already discouraged, right.
Speaker 2: And then I think some.
Speaker 1: Other areas within on the campus where students are kind
Speaker 1: of selling themselves short is, for example, office hours. I
Speaker 1: was a TA for a lot of the common CS
Speaker 1: courses at qunell and for whatever reason, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of students wouldn't go to office hours, right. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because of the same issue they're facing in classes
Speaker 1: where they feel like if they go to office hours,
Speaker 1: they're just going to be you know, reinformed that they're
Speaker 1: like behind or feel like they're dumb for asking questions.
Speaker 1: But it's a lot of those small things. We're privileged
Speaker 1: kind of in network. Students already know that like office hours,
Speaker 1: office hours are there, I can go talk to the professor,
Speaker 1: I can use these resources.
Speaker 2: But when you feel so behind.
Speaker 1: And when you're not kind of in these environments already,
Speaker 1: you just don't feel like you can participate in the
Speaker 1: same way.
Speaker 3: With that response, then, is waiting until we get to
Speaker 3: college too late to make sure that we're ready for
Speaker 3: you know, actually getting internships to be able to get jobs.
Speaker 2: I don't believe so.
Speaker 1: I mean I think, you know, shout out to all
Speaker 1: the orgs, Codination America on Tech that are doing that
Speaker 1: are doing work at the high school level Black Girls Code.
Speaker 1: I think it does. It is helpful to start earlier
Speaker 1: and kind of get that exposure. But I don't think
Speaker 1: it's too late. I think within when you're on a
Speaker 1: campus that is already about discovery of oneself and really
Speaker 1: just learning and expanding your horizons. I do think there
Speaker 1: is hope where there are students who are still primed
Speaker 1: for pushing their their limits and kind of expanding their
Speaker 1: horizons and trying something new. But it does take intentional
Speaker 1: effort at the earliest stage, that first fresh that freshman year,
Speaker 1: because once you the way the curriculum and the major
Speaker 1: system is set up at a lot of these schools
Speaker 1: is you know, if you try to change your major
Speaker 1: once you're a sophomore juniors, near impossible, right, And so
Speaker 1: you really have to target and support those students at
Speaker 1: the freshman level. And I'll even tell you this from
Speaker 1: when I was at Cornell, when we were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of work with underclassmen, we actually started doing events
Speaker 1: that basically made other people who weren't cus feel jealous, right,
Speaker 1: like oh, this is so cool, Like you know, all
Speaker 1: my friends are doing this thing and they know how
Speaker 1: to they know how Siri works, and they know how
Speaker 1: the algorithms of YouTube and all these different social media work.
Speaker 1: And they were like, Okay, I'll do a CS minor, right,
Speaker 1: And that's happening at the college. All these are students
Speaker 1: that were pre med, right, but now they're adding a
Speaker 1: a CS minor.
Speaker 2: So I don't think it's too late at all.
Speaker 3: So as an entrepreneur, when you're going through your you
Speaker 3: know idating process of the company. You're going to start,
Speaker 3: the organization you're going to start. What was the decision
Speaker 3: making process like for you when you said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to target those college students instead of building
Speaker 3: an organization like a Black Girl's Code that actually gets
Speaker 3: them younger, earlier in the process, so that they by
Speaker 3: the time they get to college, they're more prepared.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. I think this is the lesson
Speaker 1: that I have for that I learned from myself but
Speaker 1: also try to share with other entrepreneurs, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to think too much about what you're building.
Speaker 1: I think incremental, like solving the problem in front of
Speaker 1: you incrementally, you kind of just stumble upon a business, right.
Speaker 1: That's what happened for me my freshman year, I was
Speaker 1: I got an internship at two Sigma, had a really
Speaker 1: great opportunity there. My sophomore year, I came back to
Speaker 1: that internship feeling very discouraged because there weren't other you know,
Speaker 1: black interns there, or I noticed that my friends on
Speaker 1: campus didn't get internships that summer, or weren't doing well
Speaker 1: in their classes or were considering dropping And so I
Speaker 1: said Okay, how can I just solve that problem? How
Speaker 1: can I just get my friends to come with me
Speaker 1: on all these different opportunities you know that I have.
Speaker 1: And so that was the problem that I solved, you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, and then twenty eighteen was I no
Speaker 1: longer have enough time in the day to mentor all
Speaker 1: these students, So how can I scale that by creating
Speaker 1: a community of peer to peer support? Okay, that was
Speaker 1: the problem I solved in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: by building the club, And then from twenty nineteen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, it's like, okay, well, how can I provide
Speaker 1: this value to more students on other campuses?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And so it was just me incrementally solving the problem
Speaker 1: that was right in front of me. And I think
Speaker 1: that's how everybody should approach, you know, you know, starting
Speaker 1: a company, right, You don't have to build a Google tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It's just what's the smallest version of that problem that
Speaker 1: you can solve today.
Speaker 3: And so to the idea that you know, not everybody specifically,
Speaker 3: I'm talking about black people and brown people who come
Speaker 3: into college aren't ready for the math courses and the
Speaker 3: science courses, but what are some other barriers that keep
Speaker 3: them from graduating? And then you know, then all went
Speaker 3: in the opportunity to go get internships and jobs right
Speaker 3: out of school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's there's so many there's a whole
Speaker 1: pocket episode on those barriers. But I think a couple
Speaker 1: that I know, I knew already as a student myself,
Speaker 1: but then I learned from building color stack. One it's
Speaker 1: just financial, right, Like some students just you know, can't
Speaker 1: well drops, you know, drop out of school or changed
Speaker 1: from a four year to a two year or just
Speaker 1: be you know, indefinitely on leave of absence just because
Speaker 1: of money.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I think there's there's definitely a conversation around the
Speaker 1: afford affordability of school, especially these private institutions versus state schools,
Speaker 1: where sometimes just money that prevents someone from continuing. The
Speaker 1: second thing I think about a lot is no two
Speaker 1: CS degrees are made equal, right, you know you would
Speaker 1: think that, yes, from a Cornell or you know, a
Speaker 1: Kannessas State or a Stony Book university, like they all
Speaker 1: offer computer science. So no matter which one I pick,
Speaker 1: I should be good. The truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: that academia has not stayed on par with industry, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of what it takes to become a
Speaker 1: software engineer in industry is taught out side of the classroom.
Speaker 1: And so there are two kind of sub reasons why
Speaker 1: you know, students aren't able to keep up. One is
Speaker 1: if you don't have the time right outside of a
Speaker 1: class where you're a commuter student or you're working another
Speaker 1: job to pay for school, and you think that you know,
Speaker 1: you can just do your classes and do homework and
Speaker 1: be done. You know you're going to be sol when
Speaker 1: you find out that in order to really get that job,
Speaker 1: you actually have to do your homework, get a good grade,
Speaker 1: but then also learn how to become a software engineer.
Speaker 2: And you know, when you're in.
Speaker 1: A privileged position of just being on campus and just
Speaker 1: focusing on school and all that's taken care of, you
Speaker 1: have that time, but many of these students don't. And
Speaker 1: then then on the other hand, you also don't have
Speaker 1: the curriculum that is tied and kind of pegged two
Speaker 1: industry standards, where a school like an MIT or Carnegie
Speaker 1: melon they have partnerships with these companies to build curriculums.
Speaker 2: That's relevant.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to a local school, a small
Speaker 1: CS department, you just might be out of date.
Speaker 3: And so it's interesting to say that because I've had
Speaker 3: these conversations about you know, industry and university is not
Speaker 3: being able to stay on par or college is not
Speaker 3: being able to stay on par with what they're educating,
Speaker 3: and so often it comes back to hiring the professors
Speaker 3: who can teach it because they those professors can go
Speaker 3: to the industry and make more money than they would, you know,
Speaker 3: working in a university or a college. And so I
Speaker 3: wonder what your idea is on how much self directed
Speaker 3: education we need to do, even if you're in school
Speaker 3: for your CS degree, how much of this outside of
Speaker 3: that to your you did talk a little bit about this,
Speaker 3: and you know, you got a job and you got
Speaker 3: other things to pay for the pay for that education.
Speaker 3: How much of that self directed effort is required in
Speaker 3: order to get the look from a big company or
Speaker 3: a startup that you may be interested in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think for the most part, when
Speaker 1: you look at a big like, the bigger the company,
Speaker 1: the more resources they have for learning and development. So
Speaker 1: as as long as you can prove that you can code,
Speaker 1: just generally a lot of the bigger companies with more
Speaker 1: infrastructure for learning and development. Like, if you do well
Speaker 1: in your classes and you can demonstrate a basic knowledge
Speaker 1: of coding, you'll be able to kind of secure at
Speaker 1: least beyond their radar and be competitive for roles at
Speaker 1: bigger companies. If you're talking about mid sized company and
Speaker 1: especially for a startup, they're going to expect you to
Speaker 1: come and hit the ground running. So it's going to
Speaker 1: require you to subscribe to certain newsletters so you know
Speaker 1: what the newest tech tech is, Like JavaScript has a
Speaker 1: new framework like every year, you need to know what
Speaker 1: those are. Right, You're going to have to know how
Speaker 1: to build an iOS app if you want to work
Speaker 1: on a team that their only product is a mobile app.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's that's a perfect example of something that, like across
Speaker 1: the board, is rarely taught in institutions. Right, Like you
Speaker 1: might learn how to code in Python, you might learn
Speaker 1: about databases, you might learn about machine learning, but even
Speaker 1: something like iOS development isn't a thing that's typically taught
Speaker 1: in schools because the professors do research and there isn't
Speaker 1: much much research done on like mobile app development. It's
Speaker 1: usually like database efficiency or machine learning or like programming
Speaker 1: languages compilers, so things like iOS development, which is ubiquitous
Speaker 1: in terms of its impact. Everybody uses their phone and
Speaker 1: has apps. You're actually not even learning that on average
Speaker 1: if you get a CS to be from any school
Speaker 1: in the country, so you have to go out and
Speaker 1: take a U to ME course or go on YouTube
Speaker 1: or get a book.
Speaker 2: You just have to know.
Speaker 3: All that and so some other things that we talked about,
Speaker 3: you know, with that are prohibitive for students to get
Speaker 3: the degree and actually actually graduating. What are some of
Speaker 3: those things that actually keep you from getting a job.
Speaker 3: So let's say you've graduated, You've you went to a
Speaker 3: mid level university, mid level college. You didn't go to Cornell.
Speaker 3: Not everybody's as smart as you run. But let's say
Speaker 3: you know, I went to a mid level school, I
Speaker 3: got my degree, and I still can't get a job
Speaker 3: at the company that I'm interested in.
Speaker 4: What are some of those reasons why, other than racism?
Speaker 1: Other than that, Yeah, yeah, let's start like that's already
Speaker 1: that's the three requisite that's always there. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think you know, there's there's some there's some challenges
Speaker 1: definitely when it comes to like exposure to companies. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you know at certain schools, like at a
Speaker 1: top level school, you're going to have companies flying out
Speaker 1: to be at that career. Fair right, every company that
Speaker 1: you know will go out and make sure they're at Cornell,
Speaker 1: at MIT, whatever to get in front.
Speaker 2: Of those students.
Speaker 1: What I see at the mid level schools is that
Speaker 1: it's usually like local companies, and if you're at a
Speaker 1: small school in Michigan, there's no local tech company, right,
Speaker 1: so your your access and your exposure to employment is
Speaker 1: usually at best it right. At best you're learning about
Speaker 1: some org that has a back office IT team that
Speaker 1: you might be able to work for. You don't even know,
Speaker 1: you aren't even talking to her. On the radar of
Speaker 1: like pure tech pure software companies that are hiring software engineers,
Speaker 1: which is what you study to be, right, So it's
Speaker 1: not like, let's not confuse that you study to be that,
Speaker 1: but the roles and the opportunities that are available to
Speaker 1: you are more aligned for IT and other things that
Speaker 1: are not coding. So that's one of the ways that
Speaker 1: CLUTSA obviously bridges the gap. So no matter what schools
Speaker 1: are going to your career for if you're a small
Speaker 1: school in Michigan, Illinois.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, we partner with fifty top tech tech companies
Speaker 1: today where you can immediately get on their radar. But
Speaker 1: that's like one of the bigger, bigger reasons.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you bring up cover Stack in the way
Speaker 3: that you have because I'm interested in you know, cover
Speaker 3: Stack is a nonprofit Number one. What a lot of
Speaker 3: people will ask, like, how do you make money doing this?
Speaker 3: You know, because I mean, is this like purely altruistic
Speaker 3: or are you attempting to like be like I want
Speaker 3: build a billion dollar organization hot?
Speaker 4: Like what's the motivation behind this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there's a lot of unpact there. So
Speaker 1: for me, you know me personally, my passion and who
Speaker 1: I am at heart is I like to help people.
Speaker 1: I'm a servant leader, like I just want to help
Speaker 1: people reach their full potential. So, you know, the decision
Speaker 1: to start color Stack was easy for me because I
Speaker 1: knew I'd be happy every day, Like every time a
Speaker 1: student gets a job, even if they just get a
Speaker 1: good grade on their homework assignment, I am just fired up,
Speaker 1: like let's go, Like I'm so happy for you, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how big we get, I'll always kind
Speaker 1: of have that local mindset of like, if we can
Speaker 1: help one student, we're successful. So that's just me. That
Speaker 1: was my motivation personally obviously. So I started color Stack
Speaker 1: May twenty twenty, so this is beginning kind of peak
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. And so for me, I mean I
Speaker 1: still knew rationally speaking that like, I had to make
Speaker 1: this work financially. I had an offer at Google that
Speaker 1: I had accepted at the time. Actually so I was
Speaker 1: heading to Google, was to be to be an associated
Speaker 1: product manager. And basically my calculation internally was, hey, I
Speaker 1: know I'm not going to make the same amount that
Speaker 1: I would make if I was a product manager in industry,
Speaker 1: but I want to be paid kind of respect, you know,
Speaker 1: appropriately for my time and effort working on color Stack
Speaker 1: full time. And so I first sought out to raise
Speaker 1: enough money to do that. So my first goal was
Speaker 1: raised enough money to do this full time for at
Speaker 1: least a couple of years. So we got an incubation
Speaker 1: deal with Triple Byte, and that's that was amazing. They
Speaker 1: were so supportive they got us off the ground, and today,
Speaker 1: I mean we have a full time team of six
Speaker 1: two contractors, and we fund that mainly through corporate sponsorships.
Speaker 1: So similar to you know, even Afrotech. How you know,
Speaker 1: you guys do an event, you have all these sponsors,
Speaker 1: they come in and kind of try to attract talent.
Speaker 1: We're doing the same thing kind of all year round
Speaker 1: through events and engagement with our students and companies budget
Speaker 1: for it. Like we're becoming a line item in university
Speaker 1: recruiting budgets where they're like, hey, all right, we're doing
Speaker 1: a new strategy for twenty twenty three. We got to
Speaker 1: hit Aprotech, we gotta hit Grace Hopper, and we got
Speaker 1: a partner.
Speaker 2: With color Stack.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: But when you go to a company and you say, look,
Speaker 3: I'm going to help you with your black talent, there's
Speaker 3: ninety nine people who came before you who said I
Speaker 3: can do that, and one hundred and nine coming after
Speaker 3: you who.
Speaker 4: Said I can do that.
Speaker 3: Like what is what is it that got them to
Speaker 3: believe that Yo Jeran and what he's doing with color Stack,
Speaker 3: these are who we need to be working with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean I think the first of a couple of
Speaker 1: early things that I did strategically or I under saying
Speaker 1: do them intentionally, but they happened that they were strategic.
Speaker 2: The first thing was.
Speaker 1: Being a CS student myself. The transition from this recruiter
Speaker 1: was trying to recruit me for their company to hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not running a nonprofit that you can benefit like
Speaker 1: that was such a small transition because you know, these
Speaker 1: these recruiters were like trying to literally trying to hire
Speaker 1: me for the new new GRAP programs, and you know,
Speaker 1: unfortunately I said notes a lot of them have to
Speaker 1: pick one. But it was so easy to like reach
Speaker 1: out to them because they were already excited about me
Speaker 1: as a candidate, to be like, hey, well I'm doing
Speaker 1: this other thing that's going to help you and ideally
Speaker 1: find hundreds of more knees out there in the world.
Speaker 2: And they were like immediately on.
Speaker 1: Board because I had built that trust and they already
Speaker 1: respected me for you know, a different reason but related.
Speaker 1: So I had tons of relationships like dual Lingo is
Speaker 1: a good example, Square Space, some of our silver partners,
Speaker 1: like those recruiters, I was in their pipeline. They were
Speaker 1: trying to hire me, right, so it was easy to
Speaker 1: kind of leverage those relationships. And then the second thing
Speaker 1: I connected with He's on my board now Wahabhaba Lobby.
Speaker 1: He's the founder of a community called u RX, which
Speaker 1: is a community of university recruiters and so we connected,
Speaker 1: we hit it off. I asked him to join through
Speaker 1: my board and like the brand, equity and trust just
Speaker 1: built from that as well, all the intros from.
Speaker 2: That as well, Like that just all helped out.
Speaker 1: Where a lot of the early sales I didn't have much,
Speaker 1: but they just because of my background, because of the
Speaker 1: people I was associated with, were able to give me
Speaker 1: a chance, and you know, they were rewarded and long.
Speaker 3: You know, from from your perspective, when a company doesn't
Speaker 3: have black talent at the levels it should, what are
Speaker 3: they What are they missing out on? Because we often
Speaker 3: talk about this from a justice perspective, like equality and
Speaker 3: you know, having diversity, But what are they actually missing
Speaker 3: out on? And I'm talking about even from financially. Are
Speaker 3: they missing out on the revenue opportunity for having black candidates,
Speaker 3: black talent on their teams?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean I think I think you
Speaker 1: can you can be specific about black talent, but this
Speaker 1: applies to all kind of intersectional identities out there. I
Speaker 1: think the more homogeneous, right, a team is the more
Speaker 1: blind side you have blind spots you have where you
Speaker 1: know you're thinking the same way, right, you have very
Speaker 1: similar experiences. You just view you view the world in
Speaker 1: a certain way, and you're not able to really bring
Speaker 1: in new insight and get truly creative on new product
Speaker 1: innovation or even just how your team should operate, or
Speaker 1: even just lessons learned. I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, not every you know, black student is necessarily
Speaker 1: low income, but there are lessons learned from being, you know,
Speaker 1: in certain situations and growing up in certain circumstances that
Speaker 1: could help when when companies have to cut budget and
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, innovative ways to get the profitability.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure if you're if you're a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who never had to deal with never to think
Speaker 1: about money, you probably don't know what you're doing right now.
Speaker 1: You probably you probably are trying to figure that out.
Speaker 1: And that's just an example, right, But I think you
Speaker 1: know that I've even learned within the space of building
Speaker 1: a team that's primarily black, Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: inter sectional value from the intersectionality where people are bringing
Speaker 1: different to the table. That I just would never have
Speaker 1: thought of, and that leads to better outcomes, better products,
Speaker 1: better solutions, and better returns at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: You know, we've had these stats that come out that
Speaker 3: talk about you know, ten percent of Google's national workforce
Speaker 3: is black or Latin X or you know, talk about Apple,
Speaker 3: you know where I think it's like a nearly half
Speaker 3: of their global team is all white people, right, And
Speaker 3: you know, I have the perspective that you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not interested in asking for us he did the table,
Speaker 3: That's just me. I'm interested in building my own tables.
Speaker 3: And so I wonder what your take is on these
Speaker 3: not necessarily competing approaches, But what is your take on
Speaker 3: You're like, look, we're going to continue to beat down
Speaker 3: the door of Google and say you need to be
Speaker 3: hiring us, versus we're going to go build the next Google.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy you brought this up because that I
Speaker 1: have the same thesis. Like we we partner with company,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were happy to help these students
Speaker 1: get jobs. But my ultimate mission and our ultimate mission
Speaker 1: at color Stack, is to give these students agency. I
Speaker 1: had a really close friend, a mentee that became a
Speaker 1: close friend of mine, and she a black woman from
Speaker 1: New York and she had a terrible experience interning at
Speaker 1: Google with me, Right, we had to take walks like
Speaker 1: almost every day kind of.
Speaker 2: She was crying, like there's a really bad experience.
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, I could have went to you know,
Speaker 1: the manager or talked to someone on the team be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you guy should do this differently, or here's the impact
Speaker 1: of this, and bla blah blah blah, but I focused
Speaker 1: more on just investing in her. The next summer, she
Speaker 1: worked at a company, a startup that was building a
Speaker 1: woman coaching an empowerment platform, and obviously the team was
Speaker 1: all woman and she had the best time of her life.
Speaker 1: And now she's over there working at Fingla having a
Speaker 1: great career, you know, careers, early career experience. And so
Speaker 1: for me, it's all about agency, Like I just want
Speaker 1: to help these students, right, I want them to become
Speaker 1: the strongest engineers in the world so that they can
Speaker 1: chart their own path.
Speaker 2: Right. Because when you to your point, if we just.
Speaker 1: Focused on like trying to like make these companies less biased,
Speaker 1: less racistless whatever, that's just gonna be an endless that's
Speaker 1: that's how we got to the point where we're still
Speaker 1: talking about this ten to fifteen, twenty years later. I'm
Speaker 1: not focused on that they can do that day. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to help the students just become the best.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 3: And one of the conversations that we were talking about
Speaker 3: in afro tech was, you know, we often talk about
Speaker 3: getting black people into tech, but it's another thing to
Speaker 3: keep us in tech because we don't necessarily have ecosystem everywhere,
Speaker 3: which is why color tech is important, which is why
Speaker 3: afro tech is important. What are some interesting ways you've
Speaker 3: found to help those who might be in the ecosystem
Speaker 3: but might be disengaged from the ecosystem, so we don't
Speaker 3: lose talent that you know, could have opportunity here but
Speaker 3: they don't see themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean there was some study done that said something
Speaker 1: like one of there's like a predict of retention that
Speaker 1: has to do with like com many friends you make
Speaker 1: in the workplace, Like if you don't make like two
Speaker 1: or three, then you're very likely to leave that company.
Speaker 2: And I think you know that applies here as well, where.
Speaker 1: At the very least you need community, which is a
Speaker 1: thing that Afrotech does, Like you said, this is a
Speaker 1: thing that color Stack does. All these events and all
Speaker 1: these ways for you to connect with other folks that
Speaker 1: may not be at your company, because we know what
Speaker 1: the numbers look like. But at least you notice someone
Speaker 1: in your same role in the industry, and that leads
Speaker 1: to further retention because you at least have that support system.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, like, that's one thing that I think is important,
Speaker 1: and I think people need to know about that. Even
Speaker 1: if your company may not be the most ideal situation
Speaker 1: and you can't build community, at least you can do
Speaker 1: that across different companies through you know, company agnostic communities.
Speaker 1: And I think the other thing that is missing a
Speaker 1: lot is understanding what it takes to progress. I think
Speaker 1: what happens is a lot of a lot of recent
Speaker 1: and early career professionals stay in that entry level role,
Speaker 1: that junior role for too long. And one is the
Speaker 1: fault of the manager. But like we just talked about,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to convince a manager to be less
Speaker 1: biased and whatever. Let's just focus on really educating our junient,
Speaker 1: like art from our community people who are in that
Speaker 1: junior level. Like here's what it really takes to become
Speaker 1: that level two, level three, that senior level, that manager level.
Speaker 1: Like what's the next step?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I think the breaking into the industry and that content
Speaker 1: is great, but I really want to see over the
Speaker 1: next five years more content and support around. Once you
Speaker 1: get there, how do you grow? How do you continue
Speaker 1: to progress?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm still thinking about how you got these
Speaker 3: deals versus the people who came before you and the
Speaker 3: people who were in line after you, and so because
Speaker 3: a lot of it has to come down to you,
Speaker 3: you know, like what did you learn through your journey,
Speaker 3: whether it was in school or just upbringing, about how
Speaker 3: to make yourself valuable while you're still in school, Like
Speaker 3: what kind of things make you more attractive as a person,
Speaker 3: as a professional, even that aside from turning down a
Speaker 3: role at Google, and aside from going to Cornell and
Speaker 3: getting accepted into Cornell and getting at getting job offered
Speaker 3: from Google, Like what aside from those things, Like what
Speaker 3: would you admonish other students to do to make themselves
Speaker 3: more not just hireable, but attractive as partners to these organizations?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I think the first thing is first, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't get around this. You have to be good at
Speaker 1: what you do, Like you have to invest in learning
Speaker 1: what you're really good at and just doing that to
Speaker 1: the best of your ability. Like that's the one thing
Speaker 1: that you know, people are gonna that's the one impression
Speaker 1: that you're gonna make with most people, they're gonna remember, like,
Speaker 1: you know, did you say what you're gonna do? You
Speaker 1: ran that of that and it went really well. You were,
Speaker 1: you know, on time, you know, you communicate, Like just
Speaker 1: be a good whatever you want to be in the world, Like,
Speaker 1: just be good at that, right. I think that's where
Speaker 1: I started. I started Cornell by just trying to be
Speaker 1: the best CS student I can be. The second level
Speaker 1: is about kind of networking. I hate to say networking
Speaker 1: because sometimes it's just like people think it's like super
Speaker 1: professional and boring and like proper, but it's really just
Speaker 1: putting yourself out there. Within my sophomore year, I started
Speaker 1: to like post on LinkedIn and even little things like
Speaker 1: oh I just watched Black Panther and I just really,
Speaker 1: you know, love the representation. It was a little article
Speaker 1: kind of just a couple of words, but I started
Speaker 1: to build this brand on social media based on my
Speaker 1: interests and my accolades, that people you know, started to
Speaker 1: recognize and understand about me and build that personal brand
Speaker 1: so that when they think of certain opportunities, they were
Speaker 1: able to think of me.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so once you already build that skill set right
Speaker 1: that nobody can debate, you start putting yourself out there
Speaker 1: so that people the right person can find you, see
Speaker 1: that and promote, you know, refer you to an opportunity
Speaker 1: or select you for an opportunity. So I think it's like,
Speaker 1: those are the two things that I would say, for
Speaker 1: the most part that you got to do. And I
Speaker 1: think the last thing is like once you get the opportunity,
Speaker 1: it's just like doing what you say you're going to do,
Speaker 1: following up and just seeing things through. I think the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that students aren't doing right now, we deal
Speaker 1: with this a lot of close stack is just they
Speaker 1: don't close like they'll apply to this thing that we have.
Speaker 1: They'll show up to the first event, but then three
Speaker 1: weeks later it's like, oh hey, like I'm they're either
Speaker 1: ghosting us or like oh hey I got busy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're not kind of following through like just.
Speaker 3: Close you know, Yeah, it's interesting you started off talking
Speaker 3: about you know, actually doing what you said you were
Speaker 3: going to do and then being good at what you
Speaker 3: actually are you know, supposed to be doing, because I
Speaker 3: have had I had this conversation with several different people
Speaker 3: on this podcast about you know, it's sometimes it can
Speaker 3: be a faux pod or walk into a job too
Speaker 3: early and talking about diversity and equity and include like
Speaker 3: you need to hire more of us. And you just
Speaker 3: got hired last week, bro, Like we and we hired
Speaker 3: you the code and now now you've got your black
Speaker 3: panther shirt on. And I mean, you know, like come on,
Speaker 3: like actually be good at the job. And then as
Speaker 3: you build that credibility, then you can start speaking up
Speaker 3: on certain things. So I wonder there and there's a
Speaker 3: balance there and and I'm sensitive to the balance of
Speaker 3: like when you see injustice, obviously you've got to you
Speaker 3: gotta address things appropriate least, but I think about the
Speaker 3: ways that we want to be, you know, brother Umar Johnson.
Speaker 3: And that's no shade on him. So early in the
Speaker 3: journey of a professional career, when you when you haven't
Speaker 3: proven yourself to be good at the role that they
Speaker 3: hired you for, you speak on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's tough, Like you said, there's a balance, right,
Speaker 1: but I think and I want to preface that also
Speaker 1: by saying preface is also by saying like, you know,
Speaker 1: we we know that the current circumstances aren't right, Like
Speaker 1: we can't change today what happened right over the past
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. We are here today and there are
Speaker 1: certain circumstances. So these are just ways that we can
Speaker 1: kind of get around that. But we know, Like I
Speaker 1: have these conversations with students all the time where it's like,
Speaker 1: do you want to be that pioneer. I don't think
Speaker 1: you have to be, and I don't think you deserve
Speaker 1: to be, but someone needs to be the first black
Speaker 1: employee at a certain company if that company is.
Speaker 2: Going to increase and kind of be more diverse over time.
Speaker 1: And so to your point, I think, you know, being
Speaker 1: good at what you do the best as best you
Speaker 1: can kind of just reduces any evidence, right, any unsaid
Speaker 1: or kind of flaky evidence for not promoting you, letting
Speaker 1: you go, like all these different things, and that still
Speaker 1: might happen just because of racism and bias. But the
Speaker 1: best thing that you can do for your own agency
Speaker 1: and your career is just do the work right, because
Speaker 1: at the end the day, as much as all this
Speaker 1: other social stuff is present, companies want to be profitable,
Speaker 1: do better, do better work for their customers, make great experiences,
Speaker 1: and reward their investors. So if you can just take
Speaker 1: care of that, right, if you can just write that code,
Speaker 1: push that product, do the things, you have so much
Speaker 1: more agency to add anything on top of that, to
Speaker 1: start adding new initiatives because of that respect that you have,
Speaker 1: that you have kind of solidified, right.
Speaker 3: No, I love that. I was reading an interview another interview.
Speaker 3: You were talking about the paraphrase a statement that you
Speaker 3: had here, and it says, you know, being a computer
Speaker 3: science major actually forces you to think about things in
Speaker 3: the same way an entrepreneur thinks about things. If you
Speaker 3: remember saying that, can you speak on that and elaborate?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: When I started learning how to how to code, and
Speaker 1: friend Mady who hasn't learned how to code, it, really
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to tell the computer what to do
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, right, You're using this
Speaker 1: coding language which boils down into language that the machine
Speaker 1: that you're coding on can understand to perform some level
Speaker 1: of computation or render a website or whatever the case
Speaker 1: may be, right, And what I started to learn early
Speaker 1: on is that like you have to be so detailed
Speaker 1: to write code, Like you have to think about so
Speaker 1: many different cases, if else, for loops, like all these
Speaker 1: different things that boiled down to solve some basic problem
Speaker 1: like adding two numbers. Like if you've ever written code,
Speaker 1: you know that adding two numbers isn't like some super
Speaker 1: trivial things like you actually have to think about a
Speaker 1: lot of like edge cases and math that you didn't
Speaker 1: think about before. And so I remember on this part,
Speaker 1: I think it might've been the same podcast. I was
Speaker 1: telling them, like, explain to me how you would how
Speaker 1: you would you know how to make a peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly sandwich. And they realized how many stings they
Speaker 1: take for granted. And I was like, well, as a
Speaker 1: business leader, right, as a founder, if you want to
Speaker 1: go and build a nonprofit that supports black and LATINX
Speaker 1: computer science students, and you tell me, and I ask
Speaker 1: you how you're gonna do that, and you'd tell me, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do events and we're gonna run a slack
Speaker 1: and we're gonna get sponsors. Well, okay, let's break that
Speaker 1: down into how you're gonna do those individual things. You
Speaker 1: have to break those things down. You need to continue
Speaker 1: to do that. And it just reminded me so much
Speaker 1: of what I learned when I wrote code. So when
Speaker 1: I come in and think about how to build a company,
Speaker 1: I'm starting from this basis of like I've already learned
Speaker 1: and been trained on how to be so detailed in
Speaker 1: my solutions that I'm applying that here in the same
Speaker 1: use case of like starting a company, where I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about each step, each edge case, boiling it all down
Speaker 1: to its fundamental kind of basic.
Speaker 2: Parts of the solution.
Speaker 4: Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity.
Speaker 3: Afrotech going to Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 4: And night Hire Media. It's produced by Morgan Debonne and me.
Speaker 3: Well Lucas, with additional production support by Sarah Ragan, Enrolse McLucas.
Speaker 4: Special thanking to Michael Davis.
Speaker 3: Something that's a surruno learn more about my guess The
Speaker 3: Other Tech The Trut is an innovators to afrotech dot com.
Speaker 3: Join your Black Tech Green Money, share this with somebody,
Speaker 3: Go get your money.
Speaker 4: Peace and love.