The untapped power of Black women in Corporate America

This edition of Working Together is a part of #ConversationsForChange, a series by LinkedIn News that highlights the career journeys of Black professionals in the U.S. Join the conversation using #ConversationsForChange and follow our comprehensive coverage here.

Lesley Slaton Brown remembers her father’s prayers most. Growing up in the suburban town of Merced, Calif. in the 1970s, the HP chief diversity officer says her father would recite a prayer over her head and those of her four siblings every time they would leave the house. 

His most fervent wish? That his children would be safe; shielded from the racism they would inevitably encounter as five Black children living in the United States.

50 years later, Brown thought of her father’s prayers as she watched protests erupt across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police. And she heard his prayers when she read the remarkable flood of statements coming from her executive peers across corporate America disavowing racism.

She was struck by the gestures, most of all because they revealed just how little white America knew about the countless instances of racism — both explicit and implicit — she and her fellow Black Americans endure every single day.

“After the murder of George Floyd, the closed-door conversations among Black women about racism haven’t actually changed,” Brown said. “What it really did was show the rest of America what we have seen, known and experienced.” 

“The surprise to me, and what actually saddened me, was, ‘Did you really have to see that man die in front of the camera to believe that racism is real?’”

For decades, companies have been eager to broadcast their efforts to improve diversity and inclusion. But most of these programs have barely made a dent. Of the 1,800 CEOs who have run Fortune 500 companies since 1955, two have been Black women. [In March, incoming Walgreen’s CEO Rosalind Brewer will become the third.] And when you consider all C-Suite leaders today, 21% are women and just 1% are Black women. 

The events of 2020 forced corporate leaders to face an uncomfortable reality: Racism persists, both inside and outside of their organizations. The realization has pushed companies to rethink how they approach diversity at work. Black women — who historically have been shut out of opportunity more than any other group in the U.S. — stand the most to gain from this shift. 

But is real change coming? Or are we simply hearing a lot of lip service that will fade as time passes? While 76% of Black women who work full-time that were surveyed by LinkedIn this January believe diversity and equity are important to the senior leaders at their workplace, nearly 40% find that this is more talk than action, and their companies have not made any material changes to policies or culture. 

Diversity experts, meanwhile, are cautiously optimistic. But it won’t be an easy or simple path to change.

“All too often, the burden of enacting change falls on the shoulders of those who are marginalized,” said Dnika Travis, vice president of research at the nonprofit firm Catalyst. “It is all of our problems and it belongs to us.”

‘I can’t split myself’

No matter which corner of the working world you explore, Black women, who make up 7.4% of the U.S. population, are significantly underrepresented. They occupy 1.6% of vice president roles and 1.4% of C-suite positions, according to data from LeanIn.org. For every 100 men promoted to their first manager role, only 58 Black women receive the same advancement. 

Part of the problem has to do with how companies track and measure professional advancement. Almost 100% of companies track by gender, while 90% track race /ethnicity. Less than half track representation by gender and race/ethnicity.

“That means women of color are invisible,” said LeanIn’s Co-Founder and CEO Rachel Schall Thomas. “From a numbers or data representation perspective, they actually don’t see women of color.”

Interviews with dozens of Black women at different stages in their careers paint a picture of mostly well-intentioned corporations repeatedly missing the mark for Black women. Women of color are far more likely than their white female peers to experience microaggressions, harassment and a lack of support from their managers. And yet, corporate efforts to support women in the workplace mainly focus on the needs of white women. 

Marlo Gaal, the chief talent officer at Ariel Investments, was years into her career before she worked with a Black female executive like herself. She recalls early efforts to hire diverse talent where she says there wasn’t much attention paid to women of color. 

“Oftentimes, when we talk about diversity, the effort for women is apparent,” said Gaal. “But then you look up, and it is very homogeneous. More often than not, they were all white women up there. The myth was we were killing it in the diversity space. But we really weren’t.” 

Addressing both gender and racial discrimination at work is complex, and few companies have succeeded at it, said Edith Cooper, a 25-year veteran of Goldman Sachs and the co-founder of Medley, a membership-based community for personal and professional growth. Despite rising into one of the most senior positions at the banking giant, Cooper consistently faced questions about her credentials. “Did you really go to Harvard?” she was often asked. On other occasions, she was asked to serve coffee at client meetings or to share what country she came from. Cooper is from Brooklyn. 

For Cooper, these all-too common slights add up to one big problem: Most white people do not understand — or even try to understand — the lived and unique experiences of the Black women they work with.

“Just the simple question, ‘Is it harder for you as a woman or a Black person?’ really highlights what the real issue is,” said Cooper. “I can’t split myself.”

Jordan Taylor — co-founder of Medley and Edith’s daughter — worked her way up the ranks in consulting decades after her mother began her career, but she faced the same challenges. Taylor watched as corporate leaders would consider inclusion and try to “cross it off a list” by establishing employee affinity groups or conducting unconscious bias training. Despite these efforts, when Taylor started out, there was no one who looked like her in a position of leadership at the office. 

“It’s not just saying that we need more Black women in positions of leadership at all companies,” said Taylor. “There was an opportunity for the people looking at me as an up-and-coming analyst to really try to understand what my experience was like.” 

Ready to rise

Companies have much to gain from hiring and promoting Black women. For one, they are ready to rise to the challenge. Despite the obstacles they face, Black women are substantially more likely than white women to say they are interested in pursuing executive leadership roles, according to research from the Center for Talent Innovation. They are also more likely than their white female peers to have clear long-term career goals. Their primary motivation for success is to empower others within their organizations. 

Behind the aspirations for professional success among Black women is a long history of resilience in the face of adversity, and a steadfast persistence to keep working toward their goals. Every Black woman interviewed by LinkedIn referred to other strong Black women in their community or in their immediate family who imparted some variation of the same lesson: “If you are going to succeed, you’ll have to work twice as hard as everyone else around you.” 

This desire to achieve at work is also born out of necessity, said Tiffany Dufu, the founder and CEO of women’s network The Cru. Eighty percent of Black women in the U.S. are breadwinners for their families, making excelling at work a non-negotiable part of their lives. And in a global pandemic that has upended the way many of us work, the contributions of Black women are even more critical. 

“Black women have a track record of doing a lot and achieving phenomenal results with few resources,” Dufu said. “Companies [today] are feeling strained. And, given the task of achieving [an] outcome without the headcount, budget or resourcing that they need, they’ll still hit it out of the ballpark.”   

White colleagues are often blind to the discrimination Black women face every day, in part because many keep these painful experiences hidden, according to research published in the Harvard Business Review. Black women remain silent because companies act like they don’t want to listen, said Ariel Investment’s Gaal. If companies bring Black women onto their teams but do not seek to understand their experiences, organizations may achieve some modicum of diversity but nothing close to meaningful inclusion.

Companies that fail to act stand to lose out on a substantial, largely untapped talent pool. Nearly one in three Black women who responded to LinkedIn’s survey are thinking about leaving their current job, with the top reason being lack of growth or advancement opportunities.

“If you just feel like a number, or you feel like your experience and your talent and the perspective that you bring, which happens to be diverse, isn’t considered a value add, you'll never be unbridled in all you could do,” said Gaal. 

‘Save the soul of America’

When Susan Reid, Morgan Stanley’s global head of diversity and inclusion, thinks back on her own career, she doesn’t want to discount how far the country has come. Her grandmother didn’t go to college. Her mother went, but only after she finished raising her children. As a Jamaica-born immigrant to Brooklyn, N.Y., no one in her family even knew what an investment bank was when she was growing up. 

Reid says the events of 2020 marked an inflection point for Black American workers, present and future. And a few initial signs suggest that corporate America is beginning to change how it approaches Black talent.

Starting in March, former Starbucks executive Rosalind Brewer will become the sole Black woman to currently lead a Fortune 500 company. Walgreens — the largest drugstore chain in the U.S., and one that has struggled during the pandemic — will have a Black woman at the helm. She is the only Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company since 2016.

In late January, The World Economic Forum established a Partnering for Racial Justice in Business initiative, a global coalition of companies like Google, EY and Bank of America that aims to build equitable workplaces by directly addressing Black inclusion and anti-Blackness. And in October last year, Starbucks committed to have 30% of its corporate workforce identify as a minority by 2025. And other companies — like Morgan Stanley — are conducting studies to better understand the experiences of Black women at work. 

“As difficult as last year was, we had a great diversity of voices talking about the issues and the need for change, and people were listening intently with great care and wanting to be part of the solution,” said Reid. “What we have to be prepared for is that we are going to have some ebb and flow on this, but it is not going to come off the agenda.” 

Still, not everyone is convinced change is afoot: Less than a third of Black women surveyed by LinkedIn are confident statements about systemic racism from leaders at their workplace will drive positive impact and change.

The fate of this agenda will depend on how well corporate America can get its strategic act together, said The King Center CEO Bernice A. King. As the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, she argues that the success of the Civil Rights movement her parents led was largely on account of its clear goals. Her father wasn’t just standing up to speak to share his beliefs, she said: The goal was to eradicate segregation in the South. Every speech, every meeting, every step was in service to that goal.

“All of the stars aligned, and this movement emerged, but as it got going, it really was the strategy and the planning that gave it the momentum,” she said. “They moved in a focus of manner. Sometimes we try to take on too much at one time, and if we gotta take things on, we have to really see the interconnectedness and interrelatedness. Otherwise, we can water down our efforts.” 

When King thinks back to the protests over the summer and the actions that have followed, she says she fears she doesn’t see the same clarity of vision or voice. Without that unity, she doesn’t see corporate America making lasting change on this issue.

“I believe corporate America can be the people who save the soul of America,” King said. “Corporate America consists of all of us. We are their patrons and customers. They have a responsibility to humanity…. This is the time where competitiveness has to be put aside. This is the time where they have to come together in this critical area.”

Continuing her father’s tradition, HP’s Lesley Brown prays for her children daily. Her prayers focus on the possibility for positive change.

“My hope is that the world continues to shift its negative perspectives and biases toward Black and Brown children so they are empowered to reach their dreams,” she said. “The tide is changing, but it needs to happen faster.”

Photo Credits (Top to Bottom): 1) Ariel Investments Chief Talent Officer Marlo Gaal, 2) Medley Co-Founders Edith Cooper (right) and Jordan Taylor, 3) The Cru Founder Tiffany Dufu (right) and Lori Pace, a member of The Cru (Photo Credit: Jenny Groza), 4) Morgan Stanley’s Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion Susan Reid; 5) The King Center CEO Dr. Bernice A. King