How to be White: Tangible Advice for Business Leaders

Before I start, I want to thank Baratunde Thurston, New York Times best-selling author of “How to be Black” for allowing me to riff off of his title. If you have not read “How to be Black” yet, do yourself a favor and read it. 

The day after we launched IFundWomen of Color (IFWoC) on the main stage at the Women's March NYC, one of IFundWomen's entrepreneurs, who is a published author for The Sunday Times, Goop, The Cut, and others, sent a note to Olivia Owens and I. Here is an excerpt:  

I want to take a moment to honor the fact that you are on the front lines when issues such as these arise. I hope that one day Karen can feel confident enough to acknowledge and speak about these issues with WOC in your community on her own—rather than have you carry the emotional labor. 

Most people who follow me know Olivia Owens, Head of Partnerships, and Creator/GM of IFundWomen of Color. Over 3 years ago, Olivia was my first hire at IFundWomen. The reason why I hired Olivia is that she's a brilliant, strategic listener, and could help three white ally co-founders (Me, Sarah Sommers, and Kate Anderson) navigate our new world of IFundWomen, a marketplace for women entrepreneurs and the people who want to fund them, where 70% of our customers are entrepreneurs of color. 

Our 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th hires were also POCs across all departments because we knew we needed to build products and services that actually addressed the needs of our growing funding community. Today, 53% of IFW's staff are POCs and the rest are hardcore white allies. 

I believe that systemic change comes from two things:

1. Raising children who are not racist

2. Companies hiring diverse teams, giving equal pay and equity, all with the goal of creating intergenerational wealth for people of color.

I’m going to talk about corporations first. Hiring POCs is essential not just because it's the right thing to do, but because if your customers are diverse, which likely applies to most companies, then you must hire diverse teams to service your customers. Also, diverse teams perform better. 

Hiring a diverse team is easy, and any business leader who says it’s not is not trying hard enough or is using arcane hiring algorithms that exclude people of color. 

Hiring POCs also means that when POCs have money, they have power. Olivia grew into a leadership role as Creator & GM of IFundWomen of Color, and as compensation, she got the same amount of equity that the other two co-founders at the company have. 

Equity = ownership = money = power.

I gave Olivia equal co-founder equity in IFundWomen many months ago, and to be honest, I did it because it was the right, and deserved thing to do. Olivia has been at IFW since day 1, has created so many of the products and services that still stand today, and is driving results for our entrepreneurs. She got "co-founder-level" equity because she deserved it.  

But, as someone who has studied race relations my whole life, I also knew what this would mean for the black community that looked up to Olivia as a role model, and what it means to have real equity - not some bullshit equality, but real equity - the same amount of potential money-making opportunities as the other white co-founders. MONEY. Because money is power. 

What I didn't realize was that as a lifelong white ally, I should have been way louder about this way earlier, and not waited for the revolution to talk about it, or even worse, encourage Olivia to write a TED talk about it.  

As a white ally, it’s my job to scream from the rooftops “Hey Silicon Valley startups: Make sure that you have people of color not only on your cap table but equally on your cap table.”

So, going back to the note from the IFW entrepreneur about my lack of confidence in speaking up. At first, I was upset by this note. What did she mean about Karen not feeling confident to acknowledge and speak about these issues?!? What this person didn't know is that I was an African-American studies major back in the 90's at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and that I've been speaking about and fighting for racial equality my whole career. Plus, I was the Token White Lady on the diversity panels. Hello?

Ok, onto point number one: Raising kids who are not racist. 

What this entrepreneur who said I lacked confidence in my ability to speak out also didn’t know that I purposely chose to live in a racially and economically diverse community in Montclair, NJ, and put my white kid in a public school where her friends would by default, be diverse. When my 7-year-old daughter said she wanted to do cheerleading, I enrolled her. On the first day of practice, I was sitting in the stands with the other moms, and one of them asked me “Which one is your child?” to which I replied “The white one.” Yes, 100% of the cheerleading squad was black except for my kid. The other mom cracked up and said “I like you. You are honest and say it like it is.” 

Here’s her brother doing homework at one of the many cheer competitions that this single mom had to drag him to. He’s unbothered and focused. (Side note: Baratunde Thurston generously Zoomed into my kid's English class because the students had just finished reading his book, How to be Black. Needless to say, he was a huge hit with the kids.)

Aha moment alert: The keyword is...."what she didn't know".

The entrepreneur who wrote to Olivia and me who said that Karen needed to find her confidence didn’t know all this stuff about me. You know what? She’s right. I do need to find my confidence to talk about all of this stuff. 

Her feedback was spot on. 

I didn't feel confident talking openly on social media about the issues that black women face because I'm not black. While I was constantly talking to my kids, literally since birth, about race, and how we must be change-agents in the Karen Cahn household, I wasn’t talking to my audience on social media about it. While I was creating economic opportunity for people of color, I wasn’t talking about it, I was making Olivia do it for me. I was afraid of all the backlash I could have encountered about a white female founder talking about creating opportunities for black women. 

So, what I’ve learned is that it is my duty not to be quiet anymore. My silence about all the good work that the team at IFundWomen is doing or the conversations that I’m having with my kids can’t be low key anymore. I'm not going to let Olivia or any of the other POCs on our team bear the burden of being the only people to speak out on this.

I'm not always going to say the right thing and that's something I'm going to have to get over as a leader of a financial services company, as a white ally, and as someone who really wants people to like me (it’s a shortcoming, I’m working on it). 

So, I would ask of you, dear readers, if you want to give me constructive feedback, I am truly all ears.  

PS: How cute is my kid in her little cheerleading costume? Thankfully she is not on LinkedIn - I will have hell to pay for posting this video, so please don't rat me out on Instagram.