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00:00Next up, we have the lovely Barku Tubman, Essence Chief of Staff, who will be moderating the empowering panel, Black Women on Boards, the benefits and the challenges with Asahi, Pompei, and Aaron Teague.
00:28Let's give them a round of applause as they come.
00:30Hi!
00:35Look at this beautiful room.
00:50I know.
00:51Y'all look good.
00:53Yes.
00:54Yes.
00:55All of the black girl magic happening and the black joy for me happening right here.
01:00You know what I love about this room?
01:02You all are in for a treat because I've had an opportunity to connect with these two amazing ladies in the back and get your pens out, get your phones out, make sure you get them stories out because they're going to drop some gems because they're absolutely incredible.
01:17Absolutely incredible and they're here to share with you all to help you all continue to thrive because we already know you're ready so you just need the tools because that's what makes us so special.
01:29So, I'm Barku Tubman, I'm the Chief of Staff at Essence.
01:33Next to me is Asahi Pompei, who is, they took my card but I'm going to actually turn it over to Asahi to introduce yourself.
01:41Absolutely.
01:42Please, and then we'll go to Erin.
01:43First of all, it is always great to be in Barku's company.
01:45It's fantastic to be here and to be on this stage with this amazing woman, Erin.
01:49So, I'm Asahi Pompei.
01:51I'm the global head of corporate engagement at Goldman Sachs.
01:54I'm president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and I've worked at Goldman Sachs for 17 years.
01:59And I have to say, I love Essence, I love Essence Fest and it's phenomenal to be here with all of you this morning.
02:06Thank you, Erin.
02:07Over to you.
02:08Yes, yes, yes.
02:09Erin Teague.
02:10It is beautiful to see everyone.
02:13I'm all about energy so, you know, what I'm giving out, I want to feel back from y'all.
02:18I see some nods, I see some smiles.
02:20That's what I love to see.
02:22Erin Teague, I am the director of product at YouTube.
02:25I lead all things sports, film, and TV.
02:29Those three categories alone represent about 30% of YouTube's watch time and revenue.
02:35YouTube, obviously, multi-billion user platform and it's a part of Google.
02:42I also lead our racial justice, equity, and product inclusion work.
02:47And what that is, it's about making YouTube safer and more fair for creators from underrepresented
02:54and marginalized communities.
02:56That's some serious work.
02:58So, I hope you paid attention to their titles.
03:00Because a lot of times you guys gloss over your titles.
03:02Like, you know, people don't have these titles every day, right?
03:06Like, I mean, and they look like them, right?
03:08So, you know, we're here to discuss what it's like to steer their organizations in ways that are ethical,
03:15legal, and sustainable, all while maintaining integrity and accomplishing personal wins.
03:22But I think one of the things that they're also doing, and we were discussing that in the back,
03:26is they're transforming the room.
03:28So, they're not only doing it for self, they're doing it for community.
03:31And so, that's some of what we're going to talk about today.
03:34But to give you a little bit of statistics, in December 2021, Bloomberg published a report
03:39that stated that 168 black women hold 231 spots of the more than 5,500 seats at S&P 500 companies.
03:50All of that is to say, that means black female leadership is at an all-time high.
03:55And I think for me that means, clap for yourselves, right?
04:00Clap for yourselves.
04:01But again, that means what does that really mean?
04:04Because we're still seeing situations and, you know, hires and these companies having still more of us
04:12being underrepresented.
04:13And so, we still have work to do.
04:15Hence, while we're here.
04:16So, I'm going to get into the questions.
04:18But first, I think it's important to share.
04:21You already did, Erin.
04:22But Asahi, I think it's important to share.
04:24What is your job?
04:25Like, what do you do every day?
04:27So, I have a couple of jobs.
04:30But I describe it in this way.
04:33I'm responsible for all of Goldman Sachs' community impact work.
04:37So, Goldman Sachs, 150-year-old bank.
04:41How is Goldman showing up in communities around the world?
04:46How are we engaging with communities around the world?
04:48So, we have a number of signature initiatives.
04:50The one that many of you know and have been a part of, which I thank you for, because we need you,
04:55is an initiative we launched last year called One Million Black Women.
04:59Simply put, it's the largest commitment ever.
05:02Yes.
05:03Amazing.
05:04Ever in the history of this country, specifically focused on black women.
05:07$10 billion.
05:09And on top of it, $100 million in philanthropic capital.
05:13But $10 billion of commercial debt and equity investments to positively impact the lives of
05:19at least a million black women by the year 2030.
05:23In addition to a whole bunch of other programs.
05:25But that's the one I wanted to talk about today.
05:27Yes.
05:28That's amazing.
05:29Please connect with that.
05:30I mean, it is an amazing, amazing program.
05:32Erin, I'll let you also share even more about the work that you do.
05:36And I'm going to, you know what, I'm going to actually take it back because it's not a job.
05:40It's like, what is the service?
05:42Because that's really what it is that you're doing.
05:44And I think people don't get to this level by having a job.
05:49Right?
05:50You know, you really have to be a servant leader and a servant thinker in order to get here.
05:55So I'm not, we're not talking about jobs.
05:57We're talking about how are you serving?
05:59Yeah.
06:00I love that question.
06:01I actually will tell a story about how I'm serving at YouTube.
06:07So you all may know, but black women in tech are completely underrepresented.
06:13And that matters because if you think about the way that wealth is generated, certainly in this
06:19country, and if you think about the extent to which industries are being disrupted, tech is at the
06:25source of that.
06:27So industry by industry, it's, you know, started with media and, you know, everybody got rid of their
06:33VHS cassettes and then now everyone's streaming.
06:36Obviously that's our business.
06:38Everyone's streaming music.
06:40The newspaper industry collapsed because everything is online.
06:43And this thing is just expanding across industries.
06:47So software is literally changing the game.
06:50The internet has changed the game.
06:53And it's important that we're not just consumers of this content.
06:59It's important that we're also creators of this content.
07:02And the crazy thing about all of this is if you look at the wealthiest people in the world,
07:10they generally are building their wealth in three different dimensions.
07:14One is entrepreneurship.
07:16The other is real estate.
07:17And the third is it's inherited.
07:19Well, you can take us off the inheritance, right?
07:23Like that's not our journey.
07:26And that's fine because that's fine.
07:29So then it's either real estate or it's entrepreneurship.
07:32But then if you distill the entrepreneurship piece and you look at literally the wealthiest people
07:39in the world, they are seven times out of ten tech entrepreneurs.
07:45And, you know, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, right?
07:54Like these are all, the thing that Elon Musk, the thing that these folks all have in common,
07:59they're all men and none of them are black.
08:03And so, you know, when I was in business school and the IPO window was just reopening,
08:13all of these startups started becoming public.
08:18And so I watched LinkedIn go public.
08:21I watched Facebook go public.
08:23And every single time one of these companies would go public, thousands of people will become
08:28millionaires overnight.
08:30And that doesn't include the investors who are already potentially millionaires.
08:35I'm talking about people who previously weren't millionaires, work at the company for a couple
08:40of years, get early shares, equity, own a piece of that company.
08:44Four to five years later, game changing wealth.
08:48Not just for them but for their families.
08:51And so I joined Twitter pre-IPL relatively early.
08:56It was my first job out of business school.
08:58And it changed the trajectory of my entire life.
09:01And that is critical, right?
09:05And if you think about the, you know, look, I only had to work there for a couple years.
09:10Game changing.
09:11So when Twitter IPO, you know, not only me but my entire family, right?
09:17And that's how you build generational wealth.
09:20And then, you know, you kind of go, I've been at Google for five years.
09:24Our stock has quadrupled, quintupled.
09:28Sorry, six years, quintupled.
09:31That's, you know, and like if I look at my comp package, the vast majority of it, 80% of my comp,
09:37is equity.
09:38And I negotiated that intentionally.
09:41Because it's an ascending value asset class.
09:44And so that's, I think that's why it's incredibly important.
09:48And so I've been on this mission.
09:50When I joined Twitter, I called every black person that I went to college with.
09:54And I was like, there is magic happening in Silicon Valley right now.
09:59We all, I studied computer science and computer engineering in college.
10:03So I called every black engineer I knew.
10:05And I was like, y'all need to get here.
10:07Because wealth is being generated and it is game changing.
10:12And so that, so then, you know, at YouTube, I started looking around.
10:18And in 2019, I was the only black person in product.
10:21And the reason why product is so important is because if you look at the leadership of our company,
10:26our CEO, YouTube CEO, Google CEO, Alphabet CEO, all of these people grew up through the product ladder.
10:33And so that product is sort of like being the mini CEO of your product, right?
10:37So I lead sports, film, and TV.
10:39I'm the go-to person for all things YouTube sports, film, TV, all things racial justice, equity, and product inclusion.
10:46So our CEO calls me, right?
10:48I'm the mini CEO of that product line.
10:50And I was just like, hey, this is a problem that there's only one of me.
10:56Not one black woman, one black person.
11:01And at the time, I was the most senior black product person across the entire company.
11:07I was like, we got to do something about this.
11:10And so I started this program to get more black people specifically into product.
11:16Within a year and a half, we 10Xed.
11:19We're now sitting it over, I mean, you know, double digit.
11:21We're 25, 30 black product engineers now.
11:24And each one of these people have now, you know, their lives have been transformed.
11:29And now we have this multiplier effect, right?
11:32So I kind of got my first couple in and then we multiplied the impact.
11:35Love that.
11:36That's amazing.
11:37You know, and kudos to all that, you know, you intentionally did and personally did.
11:42And we continue to talk about challenges all the time and what we navigate to get to these spaces.
11:49What I think would be helpful here, especially as we want to talk about black women on boards and why we need to be there, is I don't want to talk about the challenge.
11:57I want to hear the opportunities.
11:59Like what are the opportunities and how do we access those opportunities?
12:04Because the challenges will always be there.
12:07And I think if we focus on the opportunity, we'll always address the challenge.
12:10But if we're always only burdened by the challenge, we're going to miss out on seeing the opportunities.
12:15So what are some of the opportunities that we should look at and understand in selling in our careers, but also accessing boards?
12:24Right.
12:25So I'd say a couple of things in terms of the opportunities.
12:28One is this is a discussion around black wealth.
12:32Board seats are a way to attain additional black wealth.
12:36So let's talk about the pathways.
12:38I think Erin laid it out really well in terms of real estate inheritance and entrepreneurship.
12:42On the entrepreneurship side, here's a stat that I want everybody here and everybody tuned in to know.
12:48Black women are starting businesses faster than any other demographic in this country.
12:55In the world.
12:56So if your notion of the entrepreneur is the white guy in Silicon Valley with the hoodie, that's wrong.
13:03It looks like you and that person looks like me.
13:07Two, black women tend to be solopreneurs, right?
13:12So she's the only one, the full-time employee of her business, and she is likely to have a job or several jobs in addition to running that business, right?
13:25And that is a legitimate business.
13:27It could be a side hustle, some people call it, but it's a legitimate business that's taking her time.
13:31She's a solopreneur.
13:32Now, to talk about opportunities, after three years, many of those businesses are not around.
13:41So we've got this tremendous upflow, this tremendous grit of starting a business, but we have got an opportunity to pull those businesses through,
13:53because if a business is able to survive at least three years, the chances of that business being able to take off,
14:01because you've faced the most hurdles in those first three years, then changes.
14:05So our window is, once that black woman starts the business, is to capitalize her, give her the capital that she needs, give her the network that she needs, give her the mentorship that she needs,
14:17to be able to increase our wealth as a community, her individually from the entrepreneurship side.
14:24Now, Goldman Sachs is a bank.
14:27And, as I often tell people, I see people doing amazing work as it relates to voting rights, and they're doing amazing work on reproductive rights.
14:35And I ask myself, wow, Asahi, like, you've spent almost 20 years working for a bank.
14:41Is this the blessed place in which your talents should be devoted?
14:45Here's how I know that answer is yes.
14:48Money moves the world.
14:51And we need to be in the halls where that is happening.
14:55Capital moves the world.
14:57And so we are mobilizing capital for black women entrepreneurs.
15:01I launched a program a year ago called Black in Business.
15:05It's part of our Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program.
15:09If you are out there, you are a solopreneur, go to our website, Black in Business 10,000 Small Businesses.
15:15And we are providing mentorship, education, access, and also access to capital for black women who are starting businesses,
15:23because we are determined to change that trajectory and create intergenerational wealth.
15:29I love that.
15:30That is amazing.
15:31That is amazing.
15:32In terms of the opportunity specifically as it relates to joining boards, I want you all to know that now is a very special time.
15:39And this is largely driven by regulation, which is unfortunate, but I'll take it.
15:45So the state of California a couple years ago passed a law that every public company had to have at least one woman on the board.
15:55And then the NASDAQ passed a regulation that said that they would not take companies public, meaning that they couldn't list,
16:05a private company going public couldn't list on the NASDAQ stock exchange unless they had at least one diverse person in the seat.
16:15And then several banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, some of the leading IPO underwriters came out and said,
16:23we won't underwrite a private company to take them public unless there's boardroom diversity.
16:32And so these three things happened almost simultaneously.
16:37And all of a sudden I started getting all these phone calls.
16:41And I'm like, like, okay, well, tell me more.
16:46Like, how do I figure this out?
16:48And, you know, the thing that we do as black women is we're always hyper prepared.
16:54So I didn't know much about sitting on a board seat in the boardroom, but I got enrolled in a class.
17:03The first one taught me how to interview, taught me about board bios, which are different from resumes,
17:09taught me about the board interviewing process, taught me about what to put on my LinkedIn so that I'm getting noticed
17:15and the right kinds of looks, and then taught me how to think about assessing the opportunity
17:22and what's really important because all boards are not created equal and some of these boards are work.
17:28So you need to think, and I have a job, right?
17:30My full-time job is at YouTube, Google.
17:32So this is, you know, I'm committed to four meetings a year, but, you know, it needs to be like, it needs to fit into my life, right?
17:43And I have max capacity for one board.
17:46So I joined my first corporate board in December of last year.
17:50And the second training program I did taught me how to govern, taught me all about boardroom governance,
17:58taught me all about the different committees and how to think about which committees to join, et cetera.
18:03I want to put some numbers really quickly on the financial opportunity of boards because this is really critical.
18:10So on average, board compensation ranges between 200 to 500K a year.
18:19That's additional to, like, your regular, so that's on top.
18:23That's for four meetings a year.
18:27So if you do the math at the low end, let's say you join a board that's 200K a year, you know, and my goal, by the way,
18:34when I retire is to just be on boards.
18:36One of my mentors sat on, like, 15 corporate boards.
18:38I'm not even joking.
18:40I mean, you sit on 10 boards, four meetings a year.
18:44That's 40 meetings?
18:47200K a board at the low end?
18:50That's $2 million a year for 40 meetings.
18:54That's like, I mean, think about it, right?
18:57I'll take that any day.
18:59Yes.
19:00And so, you know, but here's the thing.
19:03The average corporate board member is 77 years old, white, male, heterosexual.
19:15So they need us.
19:17And they need our point of view in the room.
19:21When I joined my first corporate board, the CEO specifically asked me to join a board.
19:27He was a classmate of mine in business school.
19:30It's a private company.
19:31They're looking at IPO.
19:32They're a unicorn.
19:33They were valued at $1.5 billion.
19:36And he got his first raise a C round, got their first independent board seat.
19:40And he called me.
19:42And he was like, Aaron.
19:43And at the time, I was sitting on three other board offers of public company boards, which
19:49would have been better potentially from a brand perspective.
19:51But the most important things about boards is you are, this is like a 10-year, it's like
19:57a marriage.
19:58Well, marriage is supposed to be life, but it's like a 10-year commitment.
20:02This is a real commitment.
20:03This is a real commitment.
20:04So you have to make sure that like, and your role is governance, corporate governance.
20:10And so you need to know that you are signing up to work with people who are ethical, who
20:16have morals, who, because that can ruin your entire career trajectory based on affiliation.
20:22And so the public companies, they just, they found me through executive search firms.
20:27This was a person who I knew, who I had gone to business school with.
20:30He started this company right after business school.
20:32Bunch of pivots, 10 years in the game.
20:34Raised one point, now I was valued at $1.5 billion.
20:37So I've seen the whole trajectory.
20:39And, you know, his first corporate, his first independent board seat, he called a black
20:47woman.
20:48And I was like, and we weren't even that tight in business school.
20:53You know, we were like socially friends.
20:55But he called me and I was like, this is, this is it.
20:59So I turned everything down.
21:01I took this opportunity.
21:02The other reason why private boards are so important is because this company will IPO.
21:08They'll raise another round at a higher valuation.
21:11So at the low end, if we just take numbers again, I'm a math quantitative person.
21:16I got $200K.
21:18I joined the board about a year ago.
21:19I got $200K first year, you know.
21:21They give you the option to take 100% stock or half cash, half stock.
21:27If you believe in a company, then you take all the stock, right?
21:30So I took 100% stock.
21:32Now if this company doubles their valuation, which is potential, then that stock doubles.
21:38I've attended four board meetings.
21:41It's like this is just like the easiest job.
21:44I work way harder in my real life job than this, you know.
21:49And so it's just an incredible opportunity.
21:52But I know that I have a unique voice in that boardroom.
21:55And the CEO told me after the first board meeting that the board dynamics completely shifted.
22:00I love that.
22:01That all the bros were on their best behavior and that they knew they had to step their game.
22:05That's what we do.
22:06That's what we bring to the table.
22:07I know our time is up, but I really just want to give you an opportunity to share, you know, really quickly, two minutes because I know they're like wrap it up.
22:17How do we get there?
22:20Like, you know, how do we get there?
22:22So, you know, we have probably some entrepreneurs, some solopreneurs, some, you know, people on their corporate career journey.
22:30How do they get there?
22:32Sure.
22:33At a high level, just because I think that, you know, we have at E-Suite, you can go out, you can get your head shots, you can have resume workshops here.
22:42What should one do to really start on that path?
22:45Got it.
22:46Yes.
22:47I'm going to end on Barku because five tips, super pragmatic.
22:50I love it.
22:51Tip number one, nonprofit boards are the gateway and can be helpful to get on a corporate board.
22:57So lots of nonprofits in our community, get on a nonprofit board, it gets your appetite wet, you get to understand that a little bit more.
23:06So that's tip number one.
23:07Two, in terms of getting a corporate board where you can get some real cash, know your pitch.
23:13Boards are looking for people with particular skills.
23:16I'm a lawyer, right?
23:18So I could be appropriate for the social responsibility committee.
23:21Maybe you're a finance person.
23:23You might be appropriate for the audit committee of the board, the finance committee of the board, right?
23:28So know your pitch, what your specific skill is that they're looking for on that board that you could be helpful for.
23:35Three, you need sponsorship.
23:37People who are saying your name, your name is on their lips.
23:41And I'm going to say something controversial now.
23:43So often we have board recycle.
23:46It's the same amazing black people, I'm not saying they're not amazing, that are on 15 boards.
23:51That doesn't serve us as a community.
23:53So when you're on like three boards, the next one that comes, call Erin, call Barku, call each of you and say, hey, I'm on three boards.
24:02I know a great sister.
24:04So let's work with each other to multiply effect and not have board recycle.
24:10And so I think those things are absolutely, absolutely critical.
24:13And then you have to figure out sort of where are your talents best matched, getting educated around it, getting your package ready.
24:21And don't be dissuade when the door is shut, right?
24:27Stick your foot in there as it's closing and do not be dissuade.
24:31Keep on knocking.
24:32What a great way to end.
24:34I am just going to say a huge thank you to both of you.
24:37This was awesome.
24:39We have to continue.
24:40I'm going to figure out how.
24:43And thank you all for showing up for yourselves here today.
24:45Yeah.
24:46Thank you so much.
24:49Thank you guys.
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