Excerpt
Let Them See You
I’m Porter Braswell, the CEO and cofounder of a company called Jopwell, a technology platform that helps Black, Latinx, and Native American students and professionals unlock opportunities for career advancement. Under my leadership, Jopwell has formed partnerships with more than one hundred of America’s leading companies and has facilitated tens of thousands of connections between the Jopwell community members and our clients. To date, we’ve raised more than $11.5 million from the likes of Magic Johnson, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Kapor Capital, Cue Ball, and others.
Since we founded Jopwell in 2015, the company has been recognized by Entrepreneur magazine (100 Most Brilliant Ideas), Fast Company (World’s Most Innovative Companies), and Business Insider (One of the Hottest New York City Companies to Watch). Over the years, I’ve received professional awards and recognition
that include being named to LinkedIn’s Next Wave, Top Professionals 35 and Under, Inc. magazine’s 30 Under 30, Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People In Business, Crain’s 40 Under 40, Vanity Fair’s Future Innovators Index, and Adweek’s Young Influencers (the publication’s annual list of the most innovative minds under age 40).
Before Jopwell, I worked at Goldman Sachs, buying and selling currencies. Before Goldman Sachs, I attended Yale University, where I was a member of the men’s varsity basketball team. Working at Goldman Sachs was everything my family had envisioned for me. My father, born in the Bronx with very few resources, became general counsel for a publicly traded utility company and, eventually, a New Jersey state judge. My mother, raised in the suburbs of New York in Westchester County, was an elementary school teacher in the inner city of East Orange, New Jersey. My parents worked so hard to give me access to a great education, and working in the financial industry was their dream for me. But it wasn’t my dream. Grateful as I was to them, I wanted more.
In spite of my education, there are many factors that should have led to the failure of Jopwell by now:
1. I’m a Black male, which means I belong to a group that gets less than 1% of venture captial money despite African-Americans making up 11% of the U.S. population. Additionally, all-Black founding teams raise almost half as much money compared to all-white founding teams.
2. I’m nontechnical, and so is my cofounder, Ryan. Tech companies that don’t have a technical founder are almost always destined for failure.
3. I had never started a business before.
4. I was only twenty-seven when we launched Jopwell.
5. I quit an incredibly desirable job, and so did my partner; giving up and going back to finance would have been much easier.
I’ve written this book because I want to significantly expand the conversation about diversity in the workplace. I believe in the power of technology to change this issue, though I know that there are no easy answers. We’ve all seen headlines like these.
Forbes: “Apple CEO Tim Cook Is ‘Not Satisfied’ with Employee Diversity”
The Guardian: “Why Are ‘Innovative’ Tech Companies Still Struggling with Diversity?”
TechCrunch: “It’s True, Black Female Founders Receive Basically Zero Venture Capital”
I know that many companies are hungry to hire diverse candidates and that the lack of diversity is a problem they care about and feel responsibility for changing. Diversity is also good for business. But our national conversation about this subject is stuck in a rut.
To start to change that, I’m going to share the success stories of others as well as my own. This book will bring you face to face with real-world strategies for overcoming common obstacles for people of color, and it will also teach you the lessons that I’ve learned from some of my influential mentors, including people such as Magic Johnson (NBA legend and NBA Hall of Fame inductee) and Mitch and Freada Kapor (VC investors and activists in the field of organizational culture and diversity).
When we first started Jopwell, we intentionally decided not to refer to our community as “diverse.” We felt this diluted our mission and, instead, we decided to refer to our community as “Black, Latinx, and Native American.” Even with this specification, we understood that racial and cultural identity is complicated, varied, and personal. We use the word “Black” to capture the many and very different cultures that fit underneath the umbrella term. In the same vein, we use the term “Latinx” so we can be as inclusive as possible to all identities in that spectrum. We believe that in America, being Black creates shared experiences for all those who identify as such. At the start of 2017, we changed from using “Latino” to Latinx as we wanted to be gender neutral and more progressive in the way we discussed our population.
Throughout the book, I’ve to used the term “people of color,” or POC, because, in corporate America, the most underrepresented groups are POC. While POC is an umbrella term that doesn’t allow us to discuss the nuances of each unique culture, it does allow for a dialogue detailing practical advice that minorities can implement and leverage in the workplace to realize their potential. As a Black American male, I, too, would rather not be categorized under such large umbrella terms, but for the purpose of this book and in order to provide the most practical advice to the largest audience that historically hasn’t been “seen” in the workplace, I use the term POC.
The practical advice presented throughout this book is meant to help you overcome challenges and obstacles that arise while working with naive and sheltered colleagues—not racist colleagues. Racism still exists—in all locations. If you don’t believe me, read my LinkedIn post on what happened to me on my subway ride home in New York City (linkedin.com/pulse/things-still-happen-porter-braswell).
It’s important to call this out now because, again, as a Black man, I have experienced racism and also dealt with ill-informed and yet not intentionally malicious colleagues. It’s important to know the difference. You have to find a way to thrive in environments where your peers just don’t seem to get it. It will make you a stronger person, a better leader, and a more effective mentor. In environments where you are dealing with racism, you have to speak up and speak out against it. The challenge is being able to identify what’s ignorance and what’s racism, which I trust you’ll be able to do as I have and still do. The advice in the book will also assist in that process.
We’re each born with an internal compass that directs us to what we’re meant to do. We all want a purpose. Some people recognize that purpose as a calling, a deep sense of responsibility, or an unsettling feeling that makes them scared they’re not living up to their potential. Whatever you name it, that thing is something we all have and feel. When we are able to follow that compass, movements are created, businesses are built and reengineered, corporate ladders are
climbed, and leaders emerge.
