As You Climb, Remember to Lift

I was walking home from my gym in Harlem last week, when I overheard an African American man say the following to whom I presumed to be his girlfriend on the the other side of the phone: "White women got money, they sure got money. But don't worry, I will never leave my Nubian queens."

My first thought- an article I read in the Huffington Post by my soon to be professor at Dartmouth, Dr. Ella Bell:

"Excluding vehicles, single black women have a median wealth of $100. Hispanic women do a little better at $120. To put it bluntly, the average black woman has only 100 bucks to her name.

Compare this to the median wealth of single white women: $41,500. This is not a typo. Single black and Hispanic women have a tiny fraction of a penny for every dollar of wealth owned by white women.

...The bottom line is the majority of women of color in this country are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net. Most black and Hispanic women -- and the children and loved ones we take care of -- are one check stub away from financial disaster."

Fruits of long-term race and gender discrimination, as well as lack of generational wealth (wills, estates, other assets that are passed down). But the point is, this is a problem that needs attention. Your attention.

One of my concerns is the implications this has to the ability for women of color to move beyond the poverty that surrounds them, by means of, let's say, a college or master's degree.

Today I was privileged to meet with the principal of The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science, along with other UA staff members and some wonderful colleagues, to explore corporate partnerships to enable the next generation of women of color to seize opportunities in technology. (Please stay tuned for updates!) Although technology is a booming industry, you will find a very small representation of women, blacks and Latinos in it. I'm ready to do my part, how about you?

In the words of Dr. Ella Bell: "Even as all of us climb, we must remember to lift."

Scary Goals

"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, not defeat." Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

Yesterday some of my colleagues presented on how they pursued goals that they thought may have been too big for them to tackle.

One of them spoke on how a new year's resolution led her to complete her first half marathon, and another one spoke on how in spite of her busy schedule as a full time employee and mother of two, her desire for social change led her to a 9 month leadership program, CORO.

I love to hear about stories of pursuits of what Jim Collins calls BHAGS- Big Hairy Audacious Goals- which are btw, distinctively clear and compelling.

Which BHAG are you pursuing now? How about your company? Is it big enough to infuse a healthy dose of fear into your loins?

Check out Henry Ford's goal in 1907: "To build a motor car for the great multitude...It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one...The horse will have disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be taken for granted."