- there are very few Black role models, and
- mentors weren’t easy to find
Media portrayals of corporate leaders in both fiction and nonfiction are usually of White men. I assume this a function of:
- the inherent fact that there are more White people in the US and thus there are more White people in business, but also
- bias in what the media industry considers as characteristics of “corporate”
Ironically, for me, many Black business role models come from the media industry: sectors like TV, music, sports, etc. There is Oprah with Harpo/Own, 50 Cent with his Vitamin Water deal, Dr. Dre with Beats by Dre and late Kobe Bryant with Bryant Seibel. As a kid, I would only see those Black leaders in the media so I would have never looked up to business leaders like Tidjane Thiam, Ken Frazier or Ursula Burns when thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was more likely to use an historical role model like John D. Rockefeller and quite frankly someone like Jack Welch who still has a legacy relevant to “how business is done” today.
“As a society, we often ask ‘Why do we have so few African-American CEOs of Fortune 500 companies?’ And we get answers like ‘racism, Jim Crow, Slavery, and structural inequality.’ Perhaps we should be asking, ‘How in the world did a Black kid from the notorious Chicago housing project Cabrini-Green Gardens become the only African-American CEO of McDonalds” - Ben Horowitz in What you do is who you are
So, there are few Black business role models and even fewer mentors. A role model helps establish a dream and maybe even a goal, but mentors help paths become clear. As a young athlete, the path to the NBA or NFL was simple and clear to me - it starts with interest for the game, then try it out; that interest becomes passion/dedication; then you actually have to show up to play and you best play the game better than pretty much everyone else in the world - sounds straightforward, but being better than nearly everyone else in the world is a very steep uphill battle. The path to succeeding in business is less steep of a hill, but that path up the hill wasn’t as clear to me. Many young kids have big dreams, but it's the mentor systems that guide them from wanting to be a Short Stop on the Yankees to higher education and onto the professional path they want to take. It’s tough to even get on that path, when you’re unaware that the path is available to you - when you aren’t seeing role models in the media or in your own community and don’t have mentors to guide you.
For some personal context on myself (this is my first post!), I grew up in one of the few Black families in a suburban town in New Jersey. My parents split up before I went into kindergarten and my father moved out. He worked in the finance division at AT&T, I believe as a controller - he’s an accountant by trade. My mom is a biochemist by trade and worked in the cosmetics and personal/home care industry. They were definitely my professional role models who helped make “Corporate America” seem like a valid option for me despite the media portrayals I mentioned above. It was clear to me that not many Black people my age had role models like this, granted this close to them. I always thought I’d wear a suit, leave early and come back home late just like them. Ironically, I think they might have even wanted me to be a professional soccer player!!! I had no idea what they did and knew very little about my Dad’s journey from the Bukom neighborhood of Accra, Ghana to New Jersey, and to AT&T or my Mom’s path from Port-au-Prince, Haiti to New Jersey, and to L'Oreal. Never were my parents professional mentors to me - great role models, but they were not mentors. Luckily, up until college, I did have great mentors, first in athletics, then in my K-12 education. I met my first post high school mentor through a part time unpaid internship at a Merrill Lynch branch in New Jersey. My problem was that while I had professional role models in my parents, up until that point, I didn’t have the mentorship to help clarify what skills I needed to be the professional I wanted to be or even what kind of professional I wanted to be.
As a young adult, I frequently saw very astute young Black kids who were getting good grades being selected as mentees by sometimes gang members, and very often their athletic coaches more so than their teachers. Sports and gangs seem to be the environments where mentors are actively selecting Black kids as mentees and even fiercely compete for the privilege of doing so. In youth football and soccer, I had both teammates and opposition that were in gangs and we all always wished that they would just focus on sports (in retrospect, it’s now saddening that we generally never wished that school/academics was the stabilizing force for these kids). There are also quite a bit of volunteer groups who offer their mentorship as charity as well - it's debatable whether they see potential in their young Black mentees or not.
In order for someone to become a mentor, you basically have to demonstrate interest, demonstrate aptitude/skills and finally demonstrate the ability to learn what they do. Once they see this, they pretty much select you as a mentee - you can pick a role model, but you cannot simply pick a mentor. And while you may consider them “your mentor”, they may not actually call themselves “your mentor” - they may just feel connected to you enough to always answer your phone calls, texts and emails whenever you need them to. In the tech startup world, I’ve noticed that when people say they are seeking “mentors” they really mean “board of advisers” or more formally “board of directors” - mentors aren’t necessarily the people who’s picture you’d want on your company’s website, they can be, but it’s not always the case.
Teachers/professors and business people who are focused on whatever it is they are doing, rarely select mentees in general and I’d argue that like myself a lot of young Black students and professionals find it challenging to adapt to these new environments (college and business) without their parents and athletic coaches providing the guidance they once had. To find a mentor you have to go to them and literally follow them around (demonstrate interest) and learn to say things relevant to them (aptitude and learning ability). I didn’t get paid, but at Merrill Lynch, I learned what financial professional role models and professional mentors could be. Here’s what I really remember doing in this internship:
- Toured the New York Stock Exchange - Ford’s CEO rang the opening bell that day making a Fortune 500 CEO a reality to me not just another “unicorn”
- Visited Merrill’s old headquarters and met the structured finance team. I didn’t know what structured finance was at the time, but I eventually learned enough to speak to it conceptually and still can if needed. One of my co-interns has worked in structured finance at large global bank since we graduated
- Visited the Museum of American Finance - I finally saw Hamilton and while watching I thought of this museum because it had two statues recreating the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in the main lobby
- We’d get daily questions in our email like “How was the American banking system started?” - I learned the answer, but back then no one close to me was interested in having a conversation about it until Hamilton came out
- We had a book list: I read On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System and The Quants
- Took Bloomberg Terminal training courses at Bloomberg’s HQ
My aim is not to say that the Black business leaders need to put themselves out there as role models and mentors, everyone can chose to remain private and out of the limelight, but it is to reflect on the fact that I see very few role models that look like me and have no close professional mentors that look like me. It feels like I’m doing things counter to who I am - like I shouldn’t be doing it, like I’m some sort of rebel trying to defy the forces of nature. Henry Kravis’ story got me interested in private equity enough to take a leveraged buyout financial modeling course out of pocket while I was a broke college student, not Robert Smith’s. I think he will go down in Black History as a philanthropist and not as a pioneer in technology sector private equity investing, not for generating returns for limited partners and not for being a "Barbarian at the Gate".
Now that I’ve found my way into fintech, I often get congratulated on my accomplishments. Along my journey, I’ve admittedly learned what not to say by speaking with people and making mistakes. Many of those people probably thought I was an idiot and never talked to me again - I’m still learning what to say as I go and lucky some great people are choosing to be a mentor along the way and letting me make some mistakes. I think in life, you put your best foot forward and hope that you form meaningful connections with people. Every meaningful connection could possibly be a mentor or your mentee - hopefully I will find more!!!
