BY ALEX EDWARDS • JUN 12, 2020 Earlier this year, Texas was ranked as the No. 2 state for Black entrepreneurs to build a business. While there are many factors that make the state, and Dallas-Fort Worth, a great place for founders of color—camaraderie, opportunity, economic incentives—there’s still a ways to go when it comes to inclusion. Those issues are evermore apparent in the current state of…
So you want to be an ally? It’s ok to be new to it. You just gotta be true to it. How? The biggest hurdle you’ll have is empathy. It’s the thing that allows you to take a walk in someone else’s shoes and causes you to look beyond yourself. It’s the one thing that topples white fragility, which is one of the most substantial barriers to allyship.…
The year was 2013. I was minding my own business, rocking my 3-month-old to sleep after her midday bottle when my smartphone lit up. It was my first supervisor, a partner at a massive agency. He was embedded at a company that used to be a client, and that I had incredible respect for. Ultimately, he asked me to come work for that company. I wasn’t in the…
I usually begin my messages with storytelling, and while I could tell any number of stories of my experience with discrimination in Corporate America, I want to humanize this message by focusing the discussion on you–the leader who actually has some decision- making power to do something about the black employee experience in your workplace. I’ll start by asking this question: How will you move this important…
Allies… have you texted, called, emailed, sent a carrier pigeon to check on your black friends or colleagues? My network is telling me no. In fact, I know first hand. I know it seems that because some of us have learned to walk and talk in the smooth corporate way, that we have credentials up to our ears, that we are church-going people who wouldn’t dream of…
