0:00

I think the first thing is first, you can't you can't get around

0:02

this. You have to be good at what you do, Like

0:04

you have to invest in

0:07

learning what you're really good at and

0:09

just doing that to the best of your

0:12

ability. Like that's the one thing that

0:14

that's the one impression that you're gonna make with most people,

0:16

They're gonna remember, did you say what you're

0:18

gonna do? You ran that of event and it

0:20

went really well.

0:22

You were, you know, on time.

0:23

You know, you communicate, Like just be

0:25

a good whatever you want to be in the world, Like, just be good

0:28

at that.

0:30

I'm will Lucas missus Black Tech,

0:33

Green Money. I'm gonna

0:35

introduce you to some of the biggest names, some of the brightest

0:37

minds and brilliant ideas.

0:39

If you're black in.

0:40

Building, are simply using texta security you back,

0:42

this podcast is for you.

0:49

Jeroni Petty is founder and CEO at color.

0:51

Stack, the nonprofit Colici organization

0:54

that helps black lots of next computer science

0:56

students.

0:56

Get degreed and hired.

0:58

When he was at Cornell, he worked as

1:00

an intern at Google and later turned

1:02

him down for a full time gig to start his

1:04

own entrepreneurial journey.

1:07

We've had so many.

1:08

Conversations nationwide about the pipeline

1:10

for black talent and tech.

1:12

I wanted to get an idea of its current state.

1:15

To Aran, who works on this issue every day, provides

1:18

enough date.

1:18

When you look at the data, it's about thirty

1:20

percent.

1:21

You know, back in Latin next, computer science students

1:24

or people make up thirty percent of the population,

1:27

twenty percent of CS grads, and

1:29

about.

1:29

Ten percent of the industry.

1:31

So there's drop offs at each level where

1:34

you could say not enough students

1:36

are graduating with CS degrees to begin with,

1:38

but also from the ones that are, they're

1:40

not getting jobs in software right, they're maybe

1:42

going into it or becoming a teacher

1:45

or doing something that they weren't intending to do.

1:47

So we're trying to solve.

1:48

This like multi layered problem of like access

1:51

to jobs, placement, retention,

1:54

and then even attraction to bring that

1:56

twenty percent to thirty percent right

1:59

at the onset.

2:00

Do you see enough black students

2:03

interested in computer science?

2:06

So I studied CS myself, right,

2:08

So I was a csgrad and

2:10

so when I was on campus, the whole reason

2:12

I started doing this work was because

2:15

I did see that I did see the interest but

2:17

what you would find is that even

2:20

in that intro course. At a lot of these universities,

2:22

the intro course is in the intro course, you

2:24

know, they kind of gotten so used

2:26

to these people that come in and have

2:29

been learning how to study, how to code

2:31

and program from when they were in middle school.

2:34

So the professors, I think have adapted

2:37

for the wrong reasons and have now expected

2:39

so much prior knowledge where black students,

2:42

Brown students are going into these intro courses

2:44

and they feel behind, and

2:47

once they get a backgrade on that first

2:50

test or project, they're dropping the class,

2:52

They're dropping the major.

2:53

Yeah.

2:53

So I was reading something a different interview

2:55

you were doing it. You were talking about your personal mission

2:58

that you found many of your peers owner

3:00

parts in these classes, weren't

3:02

doing well in these classes. And

3:06

you talked about this as pervasive and

3:08

why is that pervasive? Like many

3:11

would say, we just aren't as talented

3:13

or you know, we don't have the proclivity for math and

3:15

science. Well, in your research and in your

3:17

work, what have you found to be the reasons why

3:19

we are not ready for

3:21

these classes in so many respects?

3:24

Yeah, I think the first thing is definitely,

3:26

you know what I just mentioned about prior knowledge, like if

3:28

you didn't go to if you didn't go to that private

3:30

school, right that had CS

3:33

one on one as a freshman, Right.

3:35

I think public education is just catching up

3:37

to c US education and baking

3:39

that into the curriculum for high schools. But if

3:42

you either didn't if you didn't go to a school

3:45

that had the coursework, or you had a

3:47

family friend that just was able

3:49

to expose you to that at a young age, you

3:51

are coming in at a college level

3:55

feeling so behind. So there's that there's

3:57

that mental kind of barrier where you just are

3:59

not as confident when you're going into your

4:01

first intro course and everybody else seems

4:03

to know everything that's already like from day

4:06

one, you're already discouraged, right.

4:08

And then I think some.

4:09

Other areas within on the

4:11

campus where students are

4:14

kind of selling themselves short is, for

4:16

example, office hours. I was a TA

4:18

for a lot of the common CS

4:21

courses at qunell and for

4:24

whatever reason, you know, a lot of

4:26

students wouldn't go to office hours,

4:28

right. Maybe it's because of the same issue

4:30

they're facing in classes where they feel like if they go to office

4:33

hours, they're just going to be you

4:35

know, reinformed that they're like behind

4:38

or feel like they're dumb for asking questions. But

4:41

it's a lot of those small things. We're privileged

4:44

kind of in network. Students already

4:46

know that like office hours, office hours are there,

4:48

I can go talk to the professor, I can use

4:50

these resources.

4:51

But when you feel so behind.

4:52

And when you're not kind of in these

4:55

environments already, you just don't feel like

4:57

you can participate in the same way.

5:01

With that response, then, is waiting

5:03

until we get to college too late to

5:05

make sure that we're ready for you know, actually

5:08

getting internships to be able to get jobs.

5:11

I don't believe so.

5:12

I mean I think, you know, shout out to all the orgs,

5:14

Codination America on Tech

5:16

that are doing that are doing work at the high school level Black

5:18

Girls Code. I think it does. It

5:21

is helpful to start earlier and kind of get that

5:23

exposure. But I don't think it's too late. I think

5:25

within when you're on a campus that is

5:27

already about discovery

5:29

of oneself and really just learning and

5:32

expanding your horizons. I do

5:34

think there is hope where there are students

5:36

who are still primed

5:39

for pushing their their limits

5:41

and kind of expanding their horizons and trying

5:43

something new. But it

5:46

does take intentional effort at

5:48

the earliest stage, that first fresh that

5:50

freshman year, because once you the way the curriculum

5:52

and the major system is set up at a

5:54

lot of these schools is you know,

5:56

if you try to change your major once you're a sophomore

5:59

juniors, near impossible, right,

6:02

And so you really have to target and support

6:04

those students at the freshman level. And I'll

6:06

even tell you this from when I was at Cornell,

6:08

when we were doing a lot of work with

6:11

underclassmen, we actually

6:13

started doing events that basically

6:16

made other people who weren't cus feel jealous,

6:19

right, like oh, this is so cool, Like you

6:21

know, all my friends are doing this thing and they know how to

6:23

they know how Siri works, and they know how the algorithms

6:25

of YouTube and all these different social media work.

6:27

And they were like, Okay, I'll do a CS

6:29

minor, right, And that's happening at the

6:32

college. All these are students that were pre

6:34

med, right, but now they're adding a

6:36

a CS minor.

6:37

So I don't think it's too late at all.

6:39

So as an entrepreneur, when you're going through

6:41

your you know idating process

6:43

of the company. You're going to start, the organization you're going

6:45

to start. What was the decision making

6:47

process like for you when you said, you know, I'm going to

6:49

target those college students instead of building

6:52

an organization like a Black Girl's Code

6:54

that actually gets them younger, earlier

6:57

in the process, so that they by the time they get to college,

6:59

they're more prepared.

7:01

That's a good question. I think this is the lesson that I have for

7:04

that I learned from myself but also try

7:06

to share with other entrepreneurs, is that,

7:09

you know, you don't want to think too much

7:11

about what you're building. I think incremental,

7:15

like solving the problem in front of you incrementally,

7:18

you kind of just stumble

7:20

upon a business, right. That's what happened for me my

7:22

freshman year, I was I

7:25

got an internship at two Sigma, had a really

7:27

great opportunity there. My sophomore

7:30

year, I came back to that internship feeling very

7:32

discouraged because there weren't other you

7:34

know, black interns there, or I

7:36

noticed that my friends on campus didn't

7:38

get internships that summer, or weren't doing well in their classes

7:41

or were considering dropping And so I said

7:43

Okay, how can I just solve that problem? How can

7:45

I just get my friends to come with me on all

7:47

these different opportunities you know that I

7:49

have. And so that was the problem that I solved,

7:51

you know, in twenty seventeen, and then twenty eighteen was

7:54

I no longer have enough time in the day

7:56

to mentor all these students, So how can I scale

7:58

that by creating a community of peer

8:00

to peer support? Okay, that was the problem

8:03

I solved in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen by building

8:05

the club, And then from twenty nineteen to twenty

8:07

twenty, it's like, okay, well, how can

8:09

I provide this value to more students on other

8:11

campuses?

8:12

Right?

8:12

And so it was just me incrementally

8:15

solving the problem that was right in front

8:17

of me. And I think that's how everybody should

8:19

approach, you know, you know, starting a company, right,

8:21

You don't have to build a Google tomorrow. It's

8:24

just what's the smallest version of that problem that you

8:26

can solve today.

8:27

And so to the idea that you know, not everybody

8:30

specifically, I'm talking about black people and brown

8:32

people who come into college aren't ready for

8:34

the math courses and the science courses,

8:37

but what are some other barriers that keep them

8:39

from graduating? And then

8:41

you know, then all went in the opportunity to go get

8:43

internships and jobs right out

8:46

of school.

8:47

Yeah, I think there's there's so many there's

8:50

a whole pocket episode on those barriers. But

8:52

I think a couple that I know,

8:55

I knew already as a student myself,

8:57

but then I learned from building color stack. One

9:00

it's just financial, right, Like

9:03

some students just you know, can't

9:05

well drops, you know, drop out of school or

9:08

changed from a four year to a two

9:10

year or just be you know,

9:14

indefinitely on leave of absence

9:16

just because of money.

9:17

Right.

9:17

So I think there's there's definitely a conversation around

9:20

the afford affordability of school,

9:22

especially these private institutions versus

9:25

state schools, where sometimes just money

9:27

that prevents someone from continuing. The

9:30

second thing I think about a lot is no

9:35

two CS degrees are made equal, right, you

9:38

know you would think that, yes,

9:40

from a Cornell or

9:43

you know, a Kannessas State or a Stony Book

9:45

university, like they all offer computer

9:47

science. So no matter which one I pick, I should

9:49

be good. The truth of the matter is that

9:52

academia has not stayed

9:54

on par with industry, and so a

9:56

lot of what it takes to become a software engineer

9:58

in industry is taught out side of the classroom.

10:01

And so there are two kind of sub reasons why

10:04

you know, students aren't able to keep

10:06

up. One is if

10:08

you don't have the time right

10:11

outside of a class where you're a commuter student or

10:13

you're working another job to pay

10:15

for school, and you think that you know, you can

10:17

just do your classes and do homework and be done. You

10:20

know you're going to be sol when you

10:23

find out that in order to really get that job, you

10:25

actually have to do your homework, get a good grade, but

10:27

then also learn how to become a software engineer.

10:29

And you know, when you're in.

10:30

A privileged position of just being on campus

10:33

and just focusing on school and all that's taken care

10:35

of, you have that time, but many

10:37

of these students don't. And then then on

10:39

the other hand, you also don't

10:41

have the curriculum that is

10:45

tied and kind of pegged two industry

10:47

standards, where a school like an MIT

10:50

or Carnegie melon they have partnerships

10:53

with these companies to build curriculums.

10:55

That's relevant.

10:56

But if you're going to a local school, a small

10:58

CS department, you just might be out

11:00

of date.

11:01

And so it's interesting to say that because I've had these

11:03

conversations about you know, industry

11:06

and university is not being able to

11:08

stay on par or college is not being able to stay

11:10

on par with what they're educating, and so often

11:12

it comes back to hiring the professors

11:15

who can teach it because they those professors can

11:17

go to the industry and make more money than they

11:19

would, you know, working in a university

11:22

or a college. And so I wonder what your idea

11:24

is on how much self directed

11:27

education we need to do, even if you're in school

11:29

for your CS degree, how much

11:31

of this outside of that to your you did

11:33

talk a little bit about this, and you know, you got a job

11:35

and you got other things to pay for the pay for

11:37

that education. How much of

11:39

that self directed effort is required

11:42

in order to get the look from

11:45

a big company or a startup that you may be

11:47

interested in.

11:49

Yeah, I think I think for the most

11:51

part, when you look at a big like, the

11:54

bigger the company, the more

11:56

resources they have for learning and development.

11:58

So as as long as you can prove

12:00

that you can code, just generally

12:03

a lot of the bigger companies with more infrastructure

12:05

for learning and development. Like, if you do

12:08

well in your classes and you can demonstrate

12:10

a basic knowledge of coding, you'll be able

12:12

to kind of secure at least beyond their

12:14

radar and be competitive for roles

12:16

at bigger companies. If you're talking

12:18

about mid sized company and especially for

12:21

a startup, they're going to expect you to

12:23

come and hit the ground running. So it's

12:25

going to require you to subscribe

12:29

to certain newsletters so you know what the newest tech

12:31

tech is, Like JavaScript has a new framework

12:33

like every year, you need to know what those are. Right,

12:36

You're going to have to know how to build

12:38

an iOS app if you want to work on a team

12:40

that their only product is a mobile app.

12:43

Right.

12:43

That's that's a perfect example of something

12:45

that, like across the board, is rarely

12:48

taught in institutions. Right, Like you might learn

12:50

how to code in Python, you might learn about databases,

12:52

you might learn about machine learning, but even something

12:55

like iOS development isn't

12:57

a thing that's typically taught in schools because

13:01

the professors do research

13:03

and there isn't much much research done

13:05

on like mobile app development. It's

13:08

usually like database efficiency

13:10

or machine learning or like programming languages compilers,

13:12

so things like iOS development, which

13:15

is ubiquitous in terms of its impact.

13:18

Everybody uses their phone and has apps. You're

13:20

actually not even learning that on average if you

13:22

get a CS to be from any school in the country, so

13:24

you have to go out and take a U to ME course

13:27

or go on YouTube or get a book.

13:29

You just have to know.

13:30

All that and so some other things

13:32

that we talked about, you know, with that

13:35

are prohibitive for students to get the

13:37

degree and actually actually graduating.

13:40

What are some of those things that actually keep you from

13:42

getting a job. So let's say you've graduated,

13:44

You've you went to a mid level

13:46

university, mid level college. You didn't go to Cornell.

13:49

Not everybody's as smart as you run. But

13:52

let's say you know, I went to a mid level

13:54

school, I got my degree, and I still

13:56

can't get a job at the company that I'm

13:58

interested in.

13:59

What are some of those reasons why, other

14:01

than racism?

14:02

Other than that, Yeah, yeah, let's start

14:04

like that's already that's the three requisite

14:07

that's always there. Yeah,

14:09

I think I think you know,

14:11

there's there's some there's

14:14

some challenges definitely when it comes to like exposure

14:18

to companies. So, for example, you

14:20

know at certain

14:22

schools, like at a

14:24

top level school, you're going to have companies

14:26

flying out to be at that career. Fair

14:29

right, every company that you know will go

14:31

out and make sure they're at Cornell, at MIT,

14:34

whatever to get in front.

14:36

Of those students.

14:37

What I see at the mid level schools

14:39

is that it's usually like local companies,

14:42

and if you're at a small school in

14:44

Michigan, there's no local tech

14:46

company, right, so your

14:49

your access and your exposure to

14:52

employment is usually

14:54

at best it right.

14:57

At best you're learning about some org that

14:59

has a back office IT team

15:02

that you might be able to work for. You

15:05

don't even know, you aren't even talking

15:08

to her. On the radar of like

15:10

pure tech pure software companies that

15:12

are hiring software engineers, which is what you

15:14

study to be, right, So it's

15:16

not like, let's not confuse that you study to

15:18

be that, but the roles and the opportunities

15:21

that are available to you are

15:23

more aligned for IT and other things

15:26

that are not coding. So that's

15:28

one of the ways that CLUTSA obviously bridges the gap. So no

15:30

matter what schools are going to your career for if

15:32

you're a small school in Michigan, Illinois.

15:35

Whatever.

15:36

I mean, we partner with fifty top tech tech companies

15:38

today where you can immediately get on their radar.

15:40

But that's like one of the bigger, bigger reasons.

15:43

You know.

15:43

I'm glad you bring up cover Stack

15:45

in the way that you have because I'm interested in you know, cover

15:47

Stack is a nonprofit Number one. What

15:51

a lot of people will ask, like, how

15:53

do you make money doing this?

15:55

You know, because I mean, is this like purely altruistic

15:58

or are you attempting to like be like I want build

16:00

a billion dollar organization hot?

16:02

Like what's the motivation behind this?

16:04

Yeah?

16:05

Yeah, for sure, there's a lot of unpact there. So for

16:07

me, you know me personally,

16:09

my passion and who I

16:11

am at heart is I like to help

16:13

people. I'm a servant leader, like I just

16:15

want to help people reach

16:18

their full potential. So, you

16:20

know, the decision

16:22

to start color Stack was easy for me because I knew

16:24

I'd be happy every day, Like every time a student gets a

16:27

job, even if they just get a good grade

16:29

on their homework assignment, I am just fired

16:32

up, like let's go, Like I'm so happy

16:34

for you, and it doesn't

16:36

matter how big we get, I'll always kind

16:38

of have that local mindset of like, if

16:41

we can help one student, we're successful. So

16:44

that's just me. That was my motivation personally

16:47

obviously. So I started color Stack May

16:50

twenty twenty, so this is beginning kind

16:52

of peak of the pandemic. And

16:55

so for me, I mean I still knew rationally

16:58

speaking that like, I had to make

17:00

this work financially. I had an offer

17:03

at Google that I had accepted at the time. Actually

17:05

so I was heading to Google, was to be to be an associated

17:07

product manager. And

17:10

basically my calculation internally was,

17:12

hey, I know I'm not going to make the same amount

17:14

that I would make if I was a product manager in

17:16

industry, but I want

17:19

to be paid kind of respect,

17:21

you know, appropriately for

17:24

my time and effort working on color Stack full time.

17:27

And so I first sought out to

17:29

raise enough money to do that. So my first

17:31

goal was raised enough money to do this full time for at least a couple

17:33

of years. So we got an incubation deal

17:36

with Triple Byte, and that's that was amazing. They

17:38

were so supportive they got us off the ground,

17:41

and today, I mean we have a full time team

17:43

of six two contractors, and

17:45

we fund that mainly through corporate

17:47

sponsorships. So similar to you know, even Afrotech.

17:50

How you know, you guys do an event, you have all

17:52

these sponsors, they come in and kind of try to attract

17:54

talent. We're doing the same thing kind of all

17:56

year round through events and engagement with our students

17:59

and companies budget for it. Like we're becoming

18:01

a line item in university

18:03

recruiting budgets where they're like, hey, all right, we're

18:05

doing a new strategy for twenty twenty three. We got

18:08

to hit Aprotech, we gotta hit Grace Hopper, and we

18:10

got a partner.

18:10

With color Stack.

18:12

I love that.

18:13

But when you go to a company and you say, look,

18:16

I'm going to help you with your black talent,

18:19

there's ninety nine people who came before

18:21

you who said I can do that, and one hundred

18:23

and nine coming after you who.

18:25

Said I can do that.

18:26

Like what is what is it that got

18:28

them to believe that Yo Jeran and what he's doing

18:30

with color Stack, these are who we need

18:32

to be working with.

18:34

Yeah, for sure.

18:35

I mean I think the first of a couple of early

18:37

things that I did strategically or I

18:39

under saying do them intentionally, but they happened

18:41

that they were strategic.

18:43

The first thing was.

18:46

Being a CS student

18:48

myself. The transition

18:51

from this recruiter was

18:53

trying to recruit me for their company to

18:56

hey, I'm not running a nonprofit that you can benefit

18:58

like that was such a small transition because

19:02

you know, these these recruiters were

19:04

like trying to literally trying to hire me for

19:06

the new new GRAP programs, and you

19:08

know, unfortunately I said notes a lot of them have to pick one.

19:11

But it was so easy to like reach

19:13

out to them because they were already excited about me as

19:15

a candidate, to be like, hey, well I'm doing this

19:17

other thing that's going to help you and ideally

19:19

find hundreds of more knees out

19:21

there in the world.

19:22

And they were like immediately on.

19:23

Board because I had built that trust and they

19:25

already respected me for you know, a different

19:28

reason but related. So I had tons

19:30

of relationships like dual Lingo is

19:32

a good example, Square Space, some of our silver partners,

19:34

like those recruiters, I was in their pipeline.

19:36

They were trying to hire me, right, so it was easy to kind

19:39

of leverage those relationships.

19:41

And then the second thing I connected with He's

19:44

on my board now Wahabhaba

19:47

Lobby. He's the founder of a community called u

19:49

RX, which is a community of university

19:51

recruiters and so we connected, we hit it off.

19:54

I asked him to join through my board and like

19:57

the brand, equity and trust just built from that as

19:59

well, all the intros from.

20:00

That as well, Like that just all helped out.

20:03

Where a lot of the early sales I

20:06

didn't have much, but they just because

20:08

of my background, because of the people I was associated

20:10

with, were able to give me a chance, and you know, they

20:13

were rewarded and long.

20:15

You know, from from your perspective, when

20:18

a company doesn't have black

20:20

talent at the levels it should, what

20:23

are they What are they missing out on? Because we

20:25

often talk about this from a justice perspective,

20:28

like equality and you know, having diversity,

20:31

But what are they actually missing out on? And

20:33

I'm talking about even from financially.

20:36

Are they missing out on the revenue opportunity

20:38

for having black candidates, black

20:41

talent on their teams?

20:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean I think I

20:46

think you can you can be specific about

20:48

black talent, but this applies to all

20:51

kind of intersectional identities

20:53

out there. I think the more homogeneous,

20:56

right, a team is the

20:59

more blind side you have blind spots

21:01

you have where you know you're thinking

21:03

the same way, right, you have very

21:05

similar experiences. You

21:08

just view you view the world in

21:10

a certain way, and you're not able to

21:13

really bring in new insight and get truly

21:15

creative on new product

21:18

innovation or even just how your team should operate,

21:20

or even just lessons learned. I mean there's a lot of

21:23

you know, not every you know, black

21:25

student is necessarily low income, but there

21:28

are lessons learned from being, you

21:30

know, in certain situations and growing up in certain

21:32

circumstances that could

21:35

help when when companies have to cut budget

21:37

and figure out, you know, innovative ways to get the

21:39

profitability. But I'm sure if you're if

21:41

you're a bunch of people who never had to

21:43

deal with never to think about money, you probably

21:45

don't know what you're doing right now. You probably you probably

21:47

are trying to figure that out. And

21:50

that's just an example, right, But I think you

21:52

know that I've even learned within the

21:56

space of building a team that's primarily

21:58

black, Like, there's a lot of inter sectional value

22:01

from the intersectionality where people are bringing different

22:04

to the table. That I just would never have thought of, and

22:07

that leads to better outcomes, better products,

22:09

better solutions, and better returns at the

22:11

end of the day.

22:12

You know, we've had these

22:14

stats that come out that talk about you know, ten

22:16

percent of Google's national workforce

22:19

is black or Latin X or

22:22

you know, talk about Apple, you know where I think

22:24

it's like a nearly

22:26

half of their global team is all white

22:28

people, right, And you know, I

22:31

have the perspective that you know, I'm

22:33

not interested in asking for us he did the table,

22:35

That's just me. I'm interested in building

22:37

my own tables. And so I wonder

22:40

what your take is on these not

22:42

necessarily competing approaches, But

22:45

what is your take on You're like, look, we're

22:47

going to continue to beat down the door of Google and

22:49

say you need to be hiring us, versus we're

22:52

going to go build the next Google.

22:54

Yeah, no, for sure.

22:55

I'm so happy you brought this up because that I

22:57

have the same thesis. Like we we partner

22:59

with company, and you know, we were happy

23:01

to help these students get jobs.

23:04

But my ultimate mission and our

23:06

ultimate mission at color Stack, is

23:08

to give these students agency.

23:11

I had a really close friend, a mentee that became

23:13

a close friend of mine, and she a black

23:15

woman from New York and she had

23:18

a terrible experience interning

23:20

at Google with me, Right, we had to take walks

23:23

like almost every day kind of.

23:24

She was crying, like there's a really bad experience.

23:27

Right, And you know, I could have

23:29

went to you know, the manager or talked to someone

23:31

on the team be like, hey, you guy should do this differently,

23:33

or here's the impact of this, and bla blah blah blah,

23:36

but I focused more on just investing in her. The

23:38

next summer, she worked at a company, a

23:41

startup that was

23:44

building a woman coaching an empowerment platform,

23:46

and obviously the team was all woman

23:48

and she had the best time of her life. And now she's over there

23:50

working at Fingla having a great career,

23:53

you know, careers, early career experience. And

23:56

so for me, it's all about agency, Like I just want to

23:58

help these students, right, I want

24:00

them to become the strongest engineers in the world so

24:02

that they can chart their own path.

24:05

Right. Because when you to your point, if we just.

24:07

Focused on like trying to like make

24:09

these companies less biased, less racistless

24:12

whatever, that's just gonna be an

24:14

endless that's that's how we got to the point

24:16

where we're still talking about this ten to fifteen,

24:18

twenty years later. I'm not focused on that they

24:21

can do that day. I'm trying to help the students just

24:23

become the best.

24:24

I love that.

24:24

And one of the conversations that

24:27

we were talking about in afro tech was, you know, we often

24:29

talk about getting black people into

24:31

tech, but it's another thing to keep us in tech

24:33

because we don't necessarily have ecosystem

24:36

everywhere, which is why color tech is important,

24:38

which is why afro tech is important. What

24:40

are some interesting ways you've found

24:42

to help those who might be in the ecosystem

24:45

but might be disengaged from the ecosystem,

24:47

so we don't lose talent that you

24:50

know, could have opportunity here but they

24:52

don't see themselves.

24:54

Yeah, for sure.

24:54

I mean there was some study done that said something

24:57

like one of there's

24:59

like a predict of retention that has

25:01

to do with like com many friends you make in the workplace,

25:03

Like if you don't make like two or three,

25:05

then you're very likely to leave that company.

25:07

And I think you know that applies

25:10

here as well, where.

25:13

At the very least you need community, which

25:15

is a thing that Afrotech does, Like you said,

25:17

this is a thing that color Stack does. All these events

25:19

and all these ways for you to connect with other folks

25:21

that may not be at your company, because we know what the numbers

25:24

look like. But at least you notice someone

25:26

in your same role in the industry, and

25:28

that leads to further retention because you

25:30

at least have that support system.

25:32

Right.

25:32

So, like, that's one thing that I think is important,

25:35

and I think people need to know about that.

25:37

Even if your company may not be the most ideal

25:39

situation and you can't build community,

25:41

at least you can do that across different companies

25:43

through you know, company agnostic communities.

25:47

And I think the other thing that is

25:49

missing a lot is understanding

25:53

what it takes to progress. I

25:56

think what happens is a lot of a lot of recent

26:00

and early career professionals stay in

26:02

that entry level role, that junior role

26:04

for too long. And one

26:06

is the fault of the manager. But like we just talked about,

26:08

I'm not trying to convince a manager

26:11

to be less biased and whatever.

26:13

Let's just focus on really educating

26:16

our junient, like art from our community

26:18

people who are in that junior level. Like here's

26:20

what it really takes to become that

26:22

level two, level three, that senior

26:25

level, that manager level. Like what's

26:27

the next step?

26:28

Right?

26:28

I think the breaking into the industry

26:30

and that content is great, but I

26:33

really want to see over the next five years

26:35

more content and support around.

26:38

Once you get there, how do you grow? How

26:40

do you continue to progress?

26:42

Right? Yeah?

26:44

You know, I'm still thinking about how you got

26:46

these deals versus the people who came before you and

26:48

the people who were in line after you, and so

26:51

because a lot of it has to come down

26:53

to you, you know, like what did you learn

26:56

through your journey, whether it was in school or

26:58

just upbringing, about how to make yourself

27:00

valuable while you're still in school,

27:02

Like what kind of things make you

27:05

more attractive as a person, as

27:07

a professional, even that aside

27:10

from turning down a role at Google, and aside

27:12

from going to Cornell and

27:14

getting accepted into Cornell and getting at

27:17

getting job offered from Google, Like what aside

27:19

from those things, Like what would you

27:21

admonish other students to do to make

27:23

themselves more not

27:26

just hireable, but

27:28

attractive as partners to

27:30

these organizations?

27:32

Yeah? Yeah, for sure.

27:33

I think the first thing is first, you can't you can't get

27:35

around this. You have to be good at what you do, Like

27:38

you have to invest in

27:42

learning what you're really good at and

27:44

just doing that to the best of

27:46

your ability. Like that's the one thing that

27:49

you know, people are gonna that's the

27:51

one impression that you're gonna make with most people, they're

27:53

gonna remember, like, you

27:56

know, did you say what you're gonna do? You

27:59

ran that of that and it went really well. You

28:01

were, you know, on time, you know, you

28:03

communicate, Like just be a good whatever

28:06

you want to be in the world, Like, just be good at that, right.

28:08

I think that's where I started. I started Cornell by

28:10

just trying to be the best CS student I can be. The

28:14

second level is about

28:17

kind of networking.

28:19

I hate to say networking because sometimes it's just like people

28:22

think it's like super professional and boring and like

28:24

proper, but it's really just putting

28:26

yourself out there. Within my sophomore year, I

28:28

started to like post on LinkedIn and

28:30

even little things like oh I just watched Black Panther

28:32

and I just really, you know, love the representation.

28:34

It was a little article kind of just a couple of words,

28:37

but I started to build this brand on social

28:39

media based on my interests

28:42

and my accolades, that people you know,

28:44

started to recognize and understand

28:47

about me and build that personal brand so that when they think

28:49

of certain opportunities, they were able to think of me.

28:52

Right.

28:52

And so once you already build

28:54

that skill set right that nobody

28:56

can debate, you start putting

28:58

yourself out there so that people

29:01

the right person can find you, see

29:03

that and promote, you

29:05

know, refer you to an opportunity

29:07

or select you for an opportunity. So I think it's like,

29:09

those are the two things that I would say, for

29:12

the most part that you got to do. And I think

29:14

the last thing is like once you get the opportunity,

29:17

it's just like doing

29:19

what you say you're going to do, following up

29:21

and just seeing things through. I think the biggest

29:24

thing that students aren't doing right now, we deal with

29:26

this a lot of close stack is just they

29:28

don't close like they'll apply

29:30

to this thing that we have. They'll show up to the

29:32

first event, but then three weeks

29:35

later it's like, oh hey, like I'm they're

29:37

either ghosting us or like oh

29:39

hey I got busy or whatever, and they're not kind

29:41

of following through like just.

29:42

Close you know, Yeah, it's interesting

29:44

you started off talking about you know, actually doing

29:47

what you said you were going to do and

29:49

then being good at what you actually

29:51

are you know, supposed to be doing, because I have had

29:53

I had this conversation with

29:56

several different people on this podcast about you know, it's

29:59

sometimes it can be a faux

30:01

pod or walk into a job too early and

30:03

talking about diversity and equity and

30:05

include like you need to hire more of us. And you just got hired

30:07

last week, bro, Like we and

30:09

we hired you the code and now now

30:12

you've got your black panther shirt on. And I mean,

30:14

you know, like come on, like actually

30:16

be good at the job. And then

30:19

as you build that credibility, then

30:21

you can start speaking up on certain things. So I wonder

30:23

there and there's a balance there and and I'm

30:26

sensitive to the balance of like when you see injustice,

30:28

obviously you've got to you gotta address

30:31

things appropriate least, but I think about

30:33

the ways that we want to be, you

30:35

know, brother Umar Johnson. And

30:38

that's no shade on him. So early in

30:41

the journey of a professional career, when you

30:43

when you haven't proven yourself to be good at

30:45

the role that they hired you for, you speak on

30:47

that.

30:48

Yeah, it's tough,

30:50

Like you said, there's a balance, right, but I think

30:52

and I want to preface that also

30:54

by saying preface is also by saying like, you

30:58

know, we we know that the current

31:00

circumstances aren't right, Like

31:02

we can't change today

31:05

what happened right over the past

31:07

hundreds of years. We are here today and there

31:09

are certain circumstances. So these are

31:11

just ways that we can kind of get around that. But

31:13

we know, Like I have

31:15

these conversations with students all the time where it's like, do

31:18

you want to be that pioneer. I don't

31:20

think you have to be, and I don't think you deserve to

31:22

be, but someone needs to be the first

31:25

black employee at a certain company if

31:27

that company is.

31:28

Going to increase and kind of be more diverse over time.

31:30

And so to your point, I think,

31:33

you know, being

31:36

good at what you do the best as

31:38

best you can kind of just reduces

31:42

any evidence, right, any unsaid

31:44

or kind of flaky evidence for

31:47

not promoting you, letting you go, like all these different

31:49

things, and that still might happen just because of racism

31:52

and bias. But the best thing that you can

31:54

do for your own agency and your career

31:56

is just do the work right,

31:59

because at the end the day, as

32:01

much as all this other social stuff is present,

32:04

companies want to

32:06

be profitable, do better,

32:08

do better work for their customers, make great

32:10

experiences, and reward their investors. So

32:12

if you can just take care of that, right,

32:14

if you can just write that code, push that product,

32:17

do the things, you have so much

32:19

more agency to add

32:22

anything on top of that, to start adding new

32:24

initiatives because of that respect that you have,

32:26

that you have kind of solidified,

32:29

right.

32:30

No, I love that. I was reading

32:32

an interview another interview. You were talking about the

32:35

paraphrase a statement that you had here, and it

32:37

says, you know, being a computer science major

32:39

actually forces you to think about things in the

32:41

same way an entrepreneur thinks about

32:43

things. If you remember saying

32:45

that, can you speak on that and elaborate?

32:48

Yeah? I think so.

32:52

When I started learning how to how to code,

32:55

and friend Mady who hasn't learned how to code,

32:57

it, really you're you're trying to

33:00

tell the computer what to do at the end of

33:02

the day, right, You're using this coding

33:04

language which boils down into

33:07

language that the machine that you're

33:09

coding on can understand to perform

33:12

some level of computation

33:15

or render a website or whatever the case

33:17

may be, right, And what I

33:19

started to learn early on is that like you

33:22

have to be so detailed to write

33:24

code, Like you have to think about so many different

33:26

cases, if else, for loops,

33:29

like all these different things that

33:32

boiled down to solve

33:35

some basic problem like adding

33:37

two numbers. Like if you've ever written

33:39

code, you know that adding two numbers isn't like some

33:41

super trivial things like you actually have to think about

33:44

a lot of like edge cases and

33:47

math that you didn't think about before. And so

33:49

I remember on this part, I think it might've been the same podcast.

33:51

I was telling them, like, explain to me how

33:53

you would how you would you know how

33:55

to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And

33:58

they realized how many stings they take

34:00

for granted. And I was like, well,

34:02

as a business leader, right, as a founder,

34:05

if you want to go and build a nonprofit

34:08

that supports black and LATINX computer science

34:10

students, and you tell me, and I ask you how you're

34:12

gonna do that, and you'd tell me, Oh, we're gonna do events

34:14

and we're gonna run a slack and we're gonna

34:16

get sponsors. Well,

34:19

okay, let's break that down into how you're

34:21

gonna do those individual things. You have to break those

34:23

things down. You need to continue to do that. And it just

34:26

reminded me so much of what I learned when I

34:28

wrote code. So when I come in and think

34:30

about how to build a company, I'm starting

34:32

from this basis of like I've

34:35

already learned and been trained on how to be so

34:37

detailed in my solutions that I'm applying

34:39

that here in the same

34:42

use case of like starting a company, where I'm thinking about

34:44

each step, each edge case, boiling

34:46

it all down to its fundamental kind

34:49

of basic.

34:50

Parts of the solution.

35:05

Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity.

35:07

Afrotech going to Black Effect Podcast

35:10

Network.

35:10

And night Hire Media. It's produced by Morgan

35:12

Debonne and me.

35:13

Well Lucas, with additional production

35:15

support by Sarah Ragan, Enrolse McLucas.

35:19

Special thanking to Michael Davis.

35:20

Something that's a surruno learn more

35:22

about my guess The Other Tech The Trut is an innovators

35:24

to afrotech dot com. Join

35:26

your Black Tech Green Money, share

35:29

this with somebody, Go

35:31

get your money.

35:33

Peace and love.