Black Women Are Wildly Underrepresented in the C-Suite. Change Starts at the Entry Level.

by Maura Walters
Re-posted by The Muse

In 2021, just 3% of computing-related jobs were held by Black women. It’s a disheartening statistic whose ripple effect reaches the highest levels of the corporate world: It was also reported in 2020 that women held the top job of CEO at just 37 of the Fortune 500 companies—a record high of 7.4%—and none of those women were Black.

Tumi Mosedame, a product manager at Intuit, believes companies have the power to change this by actively seeking out Black female talent at the entry level. “I think it’s important that companies implement real, tangible processes for advancing Black women in the workplace,” Mosedame says. “I can’t wait for the day when I see Black women in the C-suites of every company. I believe I’ll get to that point myself, but I really want it to be the norm, not an anomaly.”

Mosedame actually experienced firsthand the huge impact entry-level hiring and mentorship can make on one’s professional trajectory: She’s a recent college graduate who landed a full-time job at Intuit—the global technology platform behind products like TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp—in August 2020, after interning at the company that same summer.

Here, Mosedame talks about how her internship at Intuit prepped her for her full-time role, how the company’s Rotational Product Manager (RPM) program has provided her with valuable mentorship, and what she thinks businesses can do to create more opportunities to advance Black women to leadership positions.

[READ ON just a few to get you started.]

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