A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower

Introduction

A group of unicorns is called a blessing. Myth has it that seeing a unicorn brings good luck and fortune to the observer. We embrace this metaphor.

We are a blessing of Black unicorns, accomplished female leaders of color—rare yet highly visible—unmistakably increasing in number with the potential to wield significant influence around the world. The dictionary defines a blessing as a prayer, a stroke of luck and a seal of approval.

Look around. Imagine yourself as the only one, the sole sister in the business world: in a boardroom, in the C-suite, on a private jet, in any strategic planning meeting. Then imagine these Black unicorns as a collective of experience, succeeding, full of resilience, pioneering spirit and glory. Imagine, with us, a future in which a blessing of Black unicorns is empowered to team up, a future in which teaming up can fulfill our economic promise and be an act of salvation for our world.

Our work, A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive, presents a scholarly review of data that supports our premise for the empowerment of and collaboration by Black women in business. This book also includes the results of our original, proprietary research, our Women of Color in Business: Cross Generational Survey © which examined the views of 4,005 female desk or knowledge workers across four races (Black, LatinX, Asian and white) and four generations (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Boomers). In addition, we interviewed several successful Harvard Business School alumnae of color, across three of the four generations, whose observations and lived experiences amplify our themes.

Our work is reflective, filled with personal anecdotes and experiences, and offers real-life lessons and actions steps through what we call our Living Log. First and foremost, though, we put forth a theory and a call to action for Black women to come together—along with our allies of all colors—for the greater good.

In our historical context, women of color have had limited or no power. We’ve been victims of racism and misogyny, victims of the divide and rule and the divide and conquer strategies of slave owners and overseers. We have been separated from our families, separated along color lines for hot, back-breaking jobs in the field versus those inside in the kitchens and nurseries of the house and by society in general.

Divide and rule (from Latin divide et impera), or divide and conquer, in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.²

When slavery ended, the separations didn’t. Psychologically separated from our true identity, we carried over ideals of white is right for years. Inter-ethnic separation along color lines left over from insidious mental programming led to, for example, the paper bag test, too often a deciding factor for which social organizations, colleges, fraternities and sororities to which we could be considered for admittance. The lighter the better, but no one whose skin was darker than a brown paper bag was allowed.

Along with the perceived benefits of good hair, we developed a crabs in a barrel syndrome further promoted by the notion of a Talented tenth, which created delusional comfort for the few who succeeded in getting to the top. Ironically, the perceived physical benefits of shade and hair texture were the results of generations of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers being routinely raped by their owners, producing additional capital, i.e. additional children or assets for those owners. If we’re honest, admiration for hair and skin tones was a manifestation of self-loathing for our original blackness.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and we are in a totally new world, in different career environments. Through advances in technology, racial and gender awareness is exploding at a rapid pace. As women, we are now being told to lean in, to assert ourselves at work and at home and grab success. For women of color, however, we have the additional burden of often being the only one. Leaning in means we have to learn how to ignore and move past our only-ness, our soleness and our loneliness with style and confidence, to become leaders who have the skills to teach upcoming leaders the power of unity.

Let’s Sit On Our Sofa

We have been there. Our invitation to sit on our sofa is what happens when you bring together a renowned network news correspondent and a seasoned tech executive who want to share what we have learned and experienced with passion and compassion.

We first met through the Harvard Business School (HBS) alumni network. For us, attending HBS was a life-altering experience that created a launching pad for our career successes and financial fulfillment, just as it has for so many global business luminaries. Over the years, we have shared in and cheered on each other’s successes. After participating in the 50th-anniversary celebration of the HBS African American Student Union (AASU), we felt a deep urge to do more with the insights we have gained. After all, in 1968, AASU was created by five African American students to enrich the ranks of Black business leadership. Indeed, the mission of HBS is to create leaders who make a difference in the world. We want to embody, to breathe life into those missions today and for the future.

A source of inspiration for us is Lillian Lincoln Lambert, the epitome of a line from a Maya Angelou’s poem, We are the miraculous. In 1969, Lillian became the first African American woman to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School. For two lonely years, she was the only, the sole Black woman within the school’s hallowed halls. Still, she succeeded in earning her degree and built a thriving business. Since then, almost 700 smart and ambitious African American women have followed in Lillian’s footsteps, many ascending to become great leaders despite their only-ness.

Like Lillian, both of us have always felt like unicorns, as sole sisters, as raisins in our various professional bread puddings. We didn’t look like the vast majority of men and women against whom we competed and with whom we collaborated throughout our business lives. Our singular and collective story has not been fully told and our pay-it-forward instincts were unfulfilled.

We consider this our time to scale Black talent, to team up, to unify with our peers to create a new center of gravity. Think of the possibilities of sisters as a service. After all, today, we have software as a service (SaaS), a software distribution model that allows a provider to host applications and make them available to customers over the Internet, thus creating exponential scale. We propose using this same model in our unique context to scale the power of Black unity. The power of women supporting each other in the workplace and beyond is not to be underestimated.

Why Now? Let’s Review the Data—Theirs and Ours.

Our work is supported by data. Before we delve into our full narrative, let’s review some of the data we reference and share some of the data we collected. Data informs this work. We want you to keep the data top of mind as you read.

Demographics and Fertility

Current projections are that women of color will be in the majority in the United States by 2060, if not before. According to a 2018 New York Times op-ed by Charles M. Blow, both the Census Bureau and the Brookings Institution have noted the shrinking fertility rates of white women in the U.S. Blow cites this factor as one possible source of the current white extinction anxiety.³

Our Ambitions

To assess women’s attitudes and experiences around work and the future, we commissioned our Women of Color in Business: Cross Generational Survey©. Seeded throughout our various chapters, our results may be the first time Black female Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, and Gen Zers, all desk workers, have been queried. For fairness and comparison purposes, we also questioned LatinX, Asian and white women. We asked about satisfaction at work and in life, stress, sources of support and inspiration, the impact of their fathers and more. In many cases, our findings dovetail with those of other surveys that we have assessed.

Overall, despite the extra scrutiny Black and brown women face in the hiring process and on the job, we are the most optimistic and confident about the future. We are leaving traditional corporations in favor of our own entrepreneurial ventures in striking numbers. We are trendsetters, and we know it. But we are open to working with allies of other races, metaphorical doormen, who can and should accept and usher us into the realms of power for which we are more than qualified to enter.

Our Impact on the Overall Economy

Dr. Cindy Pace, global chief diversity and inclusion officer for MetLife, quantified the impact of Black women on the economy in the August 2018 Harvard Business Review: $1 trillion as consumers and $361 billion in revenue as entrepreneurs, launching companies at 4x the rate of all women-owned businesses.⁴

This means women of color are a force in the U.S. economy. Teaming up, indeed, could literally be an act of economic salvation.

The C-Suite

Dr. Pace’s research confirmed what we, scholars and think tanks have found: Women of color in the workplace are undeniably ambitious. We want power and influence. We confidently seize opportunities. We pursue management challenges. We cultivate influential mentors. And yet, Black women’s advancement into leadership roles has remained stagnant, even as the number of them in professional and managerial roles has increased.

In late 2014, Harvard Business Review anticipated Dr. Pace’s findings and reported Black women are nearly three times more likely than white to aspire for a position of power with a prestigious title. And yet, white women are about twice as likely as Black women to attain one. More research shows diverse leadership benefits companies in all sectors. Firms with the most ethnically diverse executive teams were 33% more likely to outperform their peers on profitability. Those with executive-level gender diversity worldwide had a 21% likelihood of outperforming their industry competitors. But these realizations have not yet created lasting change. In fact, there has been backsliding.⁵ Only a handful of women of color have ever been CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. However, currently, Ursula Burns at Xerox, Ann Fudge at Y&R Brands, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Geisha Williams at PG&E have all moved on from their CEO jobs. In their May 2020 ranking of the Fortune 500, editors announced that 36 women were CEOs of the largest companies, an increase over 2019’s 33. Three of these women were of color, Sonia Syngal at The Gap, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su and Yum China CEO Joey Wat. However, editors noted that no Black women or Latinas run Fortune 500 companies. In 2019, Mary Winston, then interim CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond, was the first Black CEO since Ursula Burns but one year later, she did not make the list.⁶

According to the search firm Korn Ferry, the dearth of senior Black leaders in corporate America is the result of high potential African American leadership talent … choosing to opt out of corporate life for independent careers. The reasons: Lack of representation in the C-suite and boardroom, conscious and unconscious biases, and lack of career support. This finding poses and increases the risk for organizations recruiting and trying to retain future African American executives and leaders.

The Korn Ferry findings are buttressed by a study by LeanIn.org with McKinsey, released in late October 2018. Forty-five percent of women of color reported being the only person of their race in work situations. Sadly, the study also found that our sole-ness, being the only one has profound costs, especially on a team, in the C-suite or on a project.

The LeanIn.org/McKinsey study found that women who spend time as the only are one-and-a-half times more likely to think about leaving their jobs than women who work with other women.

Eighty percent of women in the only category, compared to two-thirds of women across the board, say they have experienced micro-aggressions, from being mistaken for someone more junior to needing to provide more evidence of their competence.

Women who are onlys also report being sexually harassed at higher numbers.⁷

To solve these problems, Lean In and McKinsey recommend that companies hire and promote more women. That’s been the traditional response. And of course, companies should hire and promote more women. But as Korn Ferry found, there’s a Catch-22. Without more and more visible people of color at the top, younger people of color, those beginning their careers, are opting out. One of our HBS alumnae, a senior executive at LinkedIn, Jacqueline Jones, has put it bluntly, You can’t be what you can’t see.⁸

Entrepreneurs

According to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Business Report commissioned by American Express, while the number of women-owned businesses grew by an impressive 58% from 2007 to 2018, the number of firms owned by Black women grew by a stunning 164%. There were 2.4 million African American women–owned businesses in 2018, most owned by women in the 35 to 54 age range.⁹ Black women are the only racial or ethnic group with more business ownership than their male peers, according to the Federal Reserve.¹⁰

Given the coming demographic surge and the economic power of women of color, something has to give. If fully engaged as a group, unicorns of color could transform capitalism. What a blessing! This book is a call for that collective.

Why Us?

Neither of us thought the world needed another book filled with self-congratulatory tales of triumph over adversity or diversity in the corporate world. However, we appreciate what we have achieved, alone and together, and we have a passion for three outcomes:

sharing and leveraging what we’ve learned in our careers as a springboard for the next generation of Black leaders;

ensuring that our personal victories are known by more than our circle of friends; and

that we can leave a legacy that will endure and spread our message of unity.

Yes, we both have had exciting careers. Bonita was the first African-American female vice president at Google, and Jackie was the first African American female correspondent formally assigned to cover the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush White Houses for CBS News. We are used to not taking no for an answer. We are used to wielding our only-ness and cultural invisibility as a cloak or a shield. We are comfortable being in command, being leaders. We have the entrepreneurial instinct.

Also, we share another, more personal bond. We are both daughters of men who loved us dearly and championed our earliest academic achievements. Sadly, both of our fathers passed away from heart disease while we were in college. Both men were so young, just 47 years old. In some respects, each of us has been achieving for two—ourselves and our fathers: smart, insightful men who matured during the Jim Crow era and, miraculously, were optimistic about their daughters’ chances of success.

We were among the first beneficiaries of the ground-breaking opportunities the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements pried open in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Armed with our families’ support, our personal drive and our HBS degrees, we were well prepared to grab hold of and properly execute those opportunities.

Indeed, the HBS African American alumni network first brought us together. Jackie earned her MBA in 1978 and Bonita in 1983. We are both among the alumnae profiled for the school’s twin celebrations of half a century of women in the MBA program and the founding of the African American Student Union.¹¹

Although we were several years apart in graduate school, teaming up is a deliberate component of the HBS African American alumni experience, and we are proud to embody it.

Over the decades, we have mentored and supported one another, primarily in an ad hoc fashion. But we have long recognized what the research is now confirming: There is toxicity in the aloneness, the only-ness, which accomplished women of color typically experience. And there are antidotes.

We want to explore the reasons for that toxicity and its career limitations, how we have experienced them and how this toxicity is hurting the very organizations for which we work. But we also want to offer strategies for thriving and making the tough calls. We want