Game-Changing Conversations from the New C-Suite Summit

I’m personally passionate about helping women of color founders succeed. For years I’ve championed founders through my own work as an entrepreneur, multistage investor, growth advisor to startups, media personality, and change agent. I’ve seen it all.

But since taking the helm of digitalundivided and using this platform to connect women of color founders to a new world of opportunities, I’ve noticed a troubling sentiment pop up over and over again.?

To some on the outside who see women of color founders break through, it looks as if we’ve become overnight success stories who somehow managed to skip our place in line. When the reality is, more often than not we’ve been working steadily in the trenches, struggling in obscurity, building our skills and resilience over the years.?

So when we get that one opportunity, that one introduction, that one infusion of funding, we’re ready.?

We’ve been working and waiting in preparation for the chance to take all we’ve learned to the next level. So instead of simply taking one or two steps ahead, our years of struggle act like a boomerang pulling us back and propelling us forward, faster.?

It was my distinct pleasure to witness this boomerang effect up close and in person at the Undivided We Rise Summit last month in New York City. We heard from our New C-Suite List founders and other women of color founders from around the country who’ve been able to attract key investment, break barriers, and take their companies to the next level.

There were too many gems dropped to count, but here are just a few of the game-changing conversations we had during our half-day summit.?

Attention, Intention, and Funding

We opened the Undivided We Rise Summit with The Data-Driven Truth About Breaking Through, a 1:1 conversation about the numbers with our Senior Director of Data, Research and Evaluation Dr. Danielle Jackson.

According to Danielle, who spends her days deep in the numbers that characterize the clear inequities at play for women of color founders, it will take all of us to help shift perspectives about what a successful founder looks like. To close gaps quickly will take attention from the media and other stakeholders, intention from the investment community and funding from those who have the resources to back these companies.?

“This is not a trend. This is ongoing work,” Danielle said. “But we need to continue to do the work.”

Finding our place within the innovation economy

In “Meet the C-Suite: Launching to Disrupt”, we met four 2022 New C-Suite honorees who are working to overcome racial barriers, close knowledge gaps by demystifying the unknown, and increase representation in predominantly white spaces all using technology.?

How can you use technology to break down barriers and take ownership of your wealth??

How can you take part in the innovation economy?

Kimberly Wilson (HUED), Hitha Palepu(Rhshan Pharmaceuticals), Natasha Bansgopaul VegaX Holdings), and Farah Allen (The Labz) forced us to ponder tough questions like these to remain competitive in a quickly evolving landscape.

Natasha Bansgopaul of VegaX Holdings challenged us to develop our approach to blockchain highlighting the rare wealth generation opportunities available now for people of color who get in on blockchain and crypto early.?

“It’s not going away,” Bansgopaul said. “The earlier you’re in it the better off you’ll be. There’s a lot of opportunity for people of color.”

Leveraging community to launch

Speaking of opportunity, next we heard from three women who seized their biggest opportunities online.?

During “Social Changes: How Social Platforms Like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn Are Launching Founders,” we heard from Shannon Morales, founder of Tribaja; Kristina Jones, founder of Guardian Lane; and Mandy Bowman, founder of Official Black Wall Street.

All three women shared the ways social media has changed the game for them including the most important things founders of color need to consider when leveraging social media beyond marketing.?

Bowman said Official Black Wall Street started out as a social impact project on social media: she’d simply set out to build a community of conscious consumers all while changing the prevailing narrative about Black businesses.

And when therapists’ offices were shutting down in 2020 at the start of the pandemic, Kristina used LinkedIn and Instagram as a catalyst to get in front of therapists. She launched her business model by giving them a new way to position themselves to do business in the virtual environment.?

Shannon Morales founded Tribaja to increase economic mobility in Black and LatinX households. She wanted to share lessons learned from when she transitioned into the tech industry as a way to build wealth personally and generate enough income for her family.?

Morales preached the importance of social media to build your audience of customers. Though she said she regularly finds investors on Twitter, when it came to building the organization she has today, she owes much of her success to LinkedIn. She used it to build a? tribe of professionals who were looking to transition into the tech industry by simply sharing her personal testimony.

“I’ve never done sales before,” she said. “90% of paying users found me through LinkedIn.”

“I laid the foundation through storytelling…”

During “Building within Buying Power,” we met with three innovative beauty product company founders who never doubted market size and demand for their products. That is, until it was time to raise outside investment. They quickly found that when working to get investors to understand the impact of their products they had to craft the right narrative.

“I sold them on myself and my team,” said Isoken Igninedion who founded AI beauty company Parfait. She said the road to funding her company started with her. “I laid the foundation through storytelling to get investors to pay attention to us.”

She went on to share how important it is to take the time to get to know people and what else they can contribute beyond money.

“I spent years getting to know them and letting them get to know me.”

Sandra Velazquez learned she had to explain the need and size of the market, even when coming to the table with demonstrated sales history.?

“I had to reposition and retell the story in a different way,” said Velazquez, who founded Nopalera, a luxury beauty brand with a LatinX lens. “I’m not a Latina building a company for Latinas, I’m a Latina building a company for a global consumer…Latina is our point of view but the future of beauty is us aspiring to be exactly who we are.”

The responsibility of the CEO seat

Doing good in the world was a key driver for each one of the day’s speakers, but especially for Elise Smith of Praxis Labs and Shante Elliott of TasselTurn. The two closed our day of game-changing summit conversations by sharing the realities of scaling their unique social enterprises that address the needs of underserved communities.

Elise fittingly reminded the room that to whom much is given, much is required.

“A responsibility comes from this position of privilege to sit in the CEO seat,” she said.?