Kimberly Bryant Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015

Key Takeaways

Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. Um I'm going to need a little bit of audience participation, especially in a room full of female founders. So, I'm thanking you for that in advance. Um it's definitely a pleasure to be here with you all this afternoon. Um I actually just ran over from Mozilla headquarters because we're doing our very first leadership team summit. So, we have folks here from as far away as New York City to Memphis, Tennessee and the Bay Area. And so, it's been a pretty hectic week, but this was really a highlight for me to have an opportunity to speak to an audience such as this, which are other female founders that I feel a really strong connection to and our shared past. So, thank you for allowing me to chat with you a little bit about our story. Black Girls CODE was founded right here in the Bay Area. And as this picture shows, these are what we like to call our tech divas. And we think that we are really here put on this planet to design the future of technology for women and girls of color. We started in April 2011, and we really focus our work around creating these opportunities for these girls ages 7 to 17 to come in and learn about technology in a very culturally sensitive and welcoming atmosphere, which pairs them with mentors that look a little bit like them. Our mission is to empower these young women to go beyond just being consumers of technology and become the creators of it. And our vision is to train 1 million girls of color to code by the year 2040 and to become the de facto Girl Scouts of technology. I don't know what the Girl Scouts thinks about that, but we like it. When we started, you know, I think it's very interesting. We talked a little bit about this in my fireside chat with the team this morning that when we started in 2011, it was just at about the beginning of the whole learn to code movement. And really it was even the beginning of the learn to code movement for adults. Only a few organizations were really focused on teaching youth about coding and technology. Since that time, I think it's no surprise to all of us in this room, the field has really exploded. So we have organizations like Codecademy or Girls Who Code, Code Now, Codecademy, all focused on teaching young women and young men how to code and how to really break into the technology space. But despite this exponential growth we've seen in the area, Black Girls Code remains the only organization of its type with a singular focus on reaching girls from underrepresented communities. Sis, thank you for that. Um since we started, we've really seen our growth explode not just here in the Bay Area, but across the US and abroad. We currently have seven chapters in the US as well as a chapter in Johannesburg, South Africa. And we've reached about 3,000 girls to date and we continue to grow. So when I tell you those little pieces of snippets of my founder story, it seems like we have it all under control and we know exactly what we are doing. But that is not true. Um when I was getting ready to give this presentation or was asked to give the presentation, I asked the folks at YC, well, what exactly do you want me to talk about? And they're like, well, yeah, you know, just tell them your founder story to these other women and they would love to hear that. And that really made me a little bit nervous uh because I fundamentally believe that any person that's a startup founder and excuse my French, I don't know if we know what the hell we're doing. We're just trying to figure this out and see what works. And that's exactly what's been kind of our path. So when I thought about what I would talk to you about, I really didn't want to really talk at you. I just want to kind of have a conversation. Woman to woman, I don't know if there are any men in here, or girlfriend to girlfriend. And tell you a little bit about the lessons I've learned along the way. And some of it I would say is the hard knock lessons I learned along the way. So I'm going to tell you a couple of things. Um some of them are pulled from this great uh resource that I would recommend called Good to Great by Jim Collins. And I think it has a lot of tidbits that will help any entrepreneur that's starting on this path or in the freaking of it. Um but I also was like, yeah, it's been a long month and I need more help than that. Good to Great is great, but that's not going to get it. So I was like, I need to call on the ancestors above to help me figure out something to say to these women that will give them a little bit of inspiration on their way. So for me in our program with Black Girls Code, one of the things that is so very important to us is mentors. And really having those mentors and role models that give you the tip to help you get across your heel. For me growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, um I had this one mentor that I know that many of you probably know and love. And I really felt that all throughout my life, she always had the answer. Always had the answer. So today I'm going to tell you a few tips of from Good to Great, but I'm also going to pull from the book of Mother Oprah. So, Mother Oprah has an answer for anything you want to figure out in your life. And she has been with me all along this path. So, I'm going to start this journey and this tips will using a little from this and a little from that. Um the very first thing that I think was one of the lessons I've learned along the way is to do what matters most. Um in his book, Jim Collins called this defining your core values. But, what does Mother Oprah say? Mother Oprah says, always take a stand for yourself, your values, because you're defined by what you stand for. So, for Black Girls Code, we felt it was pretty obvious that what we stood for from the beginning. We were looking at this space in 2011 and seeing that it wasn't very diverse. The issue of diversity and inclusion was something that not a lot of people were talking about. But, we knew fundamentally one thing that we hold truth even today, that if technology is designed mostly by males, males who make up only half of the population, we're missing out on the innovation and solutions and creativity that a broader pool of talent can bring to the table. So, our whole work, everything that we do is really grounded in that belief. And that vow in that focus and that value that this work about technology is more than just teaching kids to code. It really is an issue of social equity. It really is an issue of social justice. It really is about equaling and leveling the playing field for everyone, especially women and girls of color. So, this is a little bit more like what we think the industry should look like. So, look at those faces. And look at that fashion. Do you see that? This is what we feel that the new leaders in technology really should look like, and our goal is to keep that value and focus in everything that we do. Another key point that Jim Collins brings out in his book is really owning your purpose. Uh purpose is so important to the work that you're going to do once you identify what your core values are. Well, Mother Oprah says it a little bit differently. She says, "The work of your life is to discover your purpose, and then get on with the business of living it out." So, now this is one that's very interesting for me personally, because I always could say that I consider myself an accidental social entrepreneur. And by that I mean that when I started this path in 2011, trust me when I tell you I had no idea I would be running a nonprofit 4 years later. I really was just a mother of a very interesting and really different kid, a daughter, who was interested in gaming and computer science. And I was looking for something to get her to be a little bit more productive than spending every weekend at GameStop buying the new games. Um and I didn't know that this is the path that it would lead me down. Um but when I really looked at the industry and some of the things that were really shocking to me at that time in 2011 is that I wasn't really aware how underrepresented women and girls were in the technology industry. When I received my degree in computer science right at the end of the '80s, as you look at this chart, that is the peak. So, right about 1989, I was able to receive my degree in electrical engineering and computer science at a peak moment for women. Women at that time received about 36 or 35% of the degrees in computer science. Since that time the number has plummeted and is now only about 12 or 14% for women, but for women of color that number falls off the cliff even further than what you see on the chart. African-American women receive only 3% of the degrees in computer science and for Latinas and Native Americans it's less than 1%. So these numbers were really a wake-up call for me. And I knew at that moment in time I would have to divert my path, which was originally to start a for-profit startup company, to really doing something to change those numbers. To change the reality for my daughter and to create a more ideal future for her and girls that look like her. And that's the work of Black Girls Code. Thank you. We are really really focused and see our purpose as changing the face of technology. We say that a lot, but we truly mean it because we really feel that there's more diversity of thought that will also be a both a business imperative and a social justice imperative for the industry itself and for our nation as a whole. And that's embedded in the purpose of our work. The next thing that Jim Collins mentions that I think is very important is the BHAG. Um the BHAG is really finding that big audacious goal and setting a stake in the ground that that is what you're going to do. One of the things he says and one of the things we think is that if that goal is not big enough to make you a little bit scared that you may not reach it, it's probably not big enough. For Black Girls Code our goal is really focused on the work that we're doing. So now couldn't really find a really good quote for Oprah, Mother Oprah, for this, but I did find a great picture. Um but, as we all know, there's nothing that Oprah does that's not big. Everything that she's she does is big. For Black Girls Code, our big audacious goal is to train 1 million girls of color to code by the year 2040. We picked the year 2040 intentionally because that's the year when the demographics in the US will shift so that those folks that we consider minorities now will become the majority. So, our focus is really to prepare these this generation of young people to move into positions of leadership, as well as to have the skills to be competitive in a changing landscape. Is it clicking? Um that was just picture of some many of the places that we've been. There are many of the girls. We haven't quite reached a million yet, but that's the focus. Um secondly, I really love this one. I love it a lot. It's have a reckless disregard for the impossible. And this one is very near and dear to my heart simply because it took me about 25 years to recognize I really wasn't that great of a corporate employee. Um that was just not my thing. Because I'm really one of those folks that kind of likes to break the rules. So, if you tell me I can't do something, that's pretty much a good indicator for me to try prove you wrong. And that is exactly what you need if you're going to be a startup founder. In terms of one of the examples that I would use in this case would be a use case for Black Girls Code would be our Summer of Code that we started in 2012. Now, in 2012, an inter- interesting thing about Black Girls Code is that we were still like really new. In 2011, we had one pilot, one pilot with about 15 students. And that's what we ended 2011 with. So, as we moved into 2012 and we started to have more workshops and we started to have more girls coming into our classes, we started to move into this period of growth, really fast growth. But, we didn't really think we were having the impact that we wanted. And we were only here in the Bay Area. So, we were sitting around one day and we had a bright idea. Why don't we take this thing on the road? We're going to take Black Girls Code on the road and we're going to go to six cities. And oh, and by the way, we're going to do this only in like 1 and 1/2 or 2 months during the summer. And yeah, we're going to reach 200 girls. Now, that might not sound like a big goal when I've told you we've reached 3,000 students, but at that time, the largest class we'd ever reached was about 30. So, we were like, yeah, we're going to do this, we're going to reach 200 girls by the end of the summer. Again, big audacious goal. Um but also, it was something that we didn't really think was necessarily going to be possible. But we didn't care because at that time, it was only myself and one employee. And we thought that this, if we did not get this work done, no one's going to do it. So, we didn't care, it's reckless disregard, and we started on our path. So, as we were going on, we were doing all this work, we did our first workshop in Atlanta, we walk into the room, pow, there's like 85 students in there. We didn't know what to do. We're like, oh, this is fantastic, they really like this thing. We better get it together. I I told you I'm going to be really honest, that's true. And so, we're like, okay, well, let's go to the next city. We went to the We went to Chicago, same thing. We went to Detroit, same thing. New York, we ended up at the end of the summer not only reaching 200 students, we reached 1,000. Yes. And that's when we knew that we really had something that we could have even a greater impact by um migrating our organization from a very hyper locally focused organization to one with chapters and utilizing this very large pool of volunteers we had to execute this work in each and every city. And if that wasn't enough for 2012, when we came into 2013, we're like, "We're going to do it again." But this time we're going to reach even more girls, we're going to reach 2,000. And oh by the way, um we're probably going to want to crowd fund for that and we're going to raise $100,000. Reckless disregard with only two people figuring out we could do that. But we did. We reached that goal. We reached $100,000 even when many people thought we actually raised about $125,000 and most people thought we wouldn't do it. So that really set our organization up for exponential growth with just all of the relationships and all of the goodwill and branding that we received from setting these goals and have a reckless disregard for our potential supposed ability to meet it. One of the things that I think if I would tell you any one thing that keeps me up at night, it is this one, building a great team. So now, one of the things that Oprah says about building a great team is this, "Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher." One of the things that Jim Collins says in Good to Great is that starting a company or running a company is a bit like driving a bus. So you need a driver. You are the driver. We are the driver as the CEO or founders, but it's our responsibility to find the right people, the key people to put in those seats. For me, founding a team or really finding the right folks to be on my team has been one of the hardest things that I have done as a startup founder. Because everyone wants to ride on the bus, but nobody really wants to do all the work that is required to do get the job done. Um but it's key for us as founders to be able to sort through finding the perfect person that has the same shared purpose and drive and is the right fit for the company because it's a make or break situation. I think another thing that I struggle with as a founder is that generally we come in with the ideas. We are like the type A number one person on the team. But the really to succeed as an organization, you have to hire people that are better than you. Better than you, smarter than you, have more knowledgeable than you, better marketers than you, better salespersons than you, everything across the board. You cannot be the best person on your team if you want your team to grow and succeed. Um today we're kind of close to getting there in terms of building our team and this is a team that we just took this picture like yesterday. They came from all over the country, but all different occupations to help grow the mission of Black Girls Code. This one I always really like to bring it on home with in terms of really knowing the end in mind or keeping the end in mind and envisioning the future before you get there. One of the ways that Oprah describes this is to create the highest grandest vision for your life, then let every single step move you in that direction. Now, while this is a personal goal, I would say this is the same for a company. And when you're building your vision, to understand where you want to see your company at the end of the line, when you reach the goal, when you've reached your mission. For Black Girls Code, yesterday we did a little exercise and we created a future vision looking out to 220. And this was one of the headlines that we thought we would see in 2020. And it's just the it's a headline that is one of our aspirational goals. But these three students are currently um in their 13 and 14-year-old age range in our program. But this is what we think the headline is going to look like underneath their picture in a few years, in 2020. Hot tech startup company founded by former members of Black Girls Code. That's what I'm really looking for and that's what the future vision is for our organization. It's to see a room filled with coders like this that are formally from Black Girls Code, based on the work and the impact that we've been able to do with the organization. So setting the goal in the mind and having that throughout our conversations as a team is what keeps us moving when the times are rough and things are hard. Last but not least, this one is really one that I think uh we've all heard before. It could be a big cliché. If you had asked me this four years ago, I would have told you that it's a cliché. Follow your passion. Oh my god, Oprah says that all the time. And I love her like no other, but it was getting on my nerves. Um but until it happened to me and I stumbled, literally, I kid you not, until I stumbled across this work, something that I would do even if I didn't get paid for it. And the way that Oprah describes this passion and being driven by this passion is, if you don't know what your passion is, realize that one reason for your soul existence on Earth is to find it. I feel very lucky, really lucky to be placed in this space in this time even in this body to be able to drive for this work. It truly is my life passion. And I have no doubt in my mind that this was this is what I was put on this Earth to do. If I could tell you any one thing I would tell you to find what is your passion. Then put all of your energy, all of your spiritual energy, all your passion, your technology energy, your intellectual energy and the focusing on that passion. And then all the other questions will be answered for you. Thank you.