Former BET Networks chief Debra Lee found it lonely at the top as one of the only women of color in the C-suite, so more than a decade ago she created Leading Women Defined.
After leaving the Viacom-run network in 2018, the executive leaned into her project. And she's looking to expand the invite-only gathering of powerful women that draws players like Michelle Obama and Hillary to a larger pool of founders, funders and others.
Lee hosted on Tuesday the first fireside chat at Blackbird, a new co-working space for women of color in Culver City, where two top female tech executives talked candidly for an hour about their journey from humble roots to executives, investors and founders.
"The demand for leading women has grown, we want to provide opportunity for connection, action and elevation among black women and our allies," Lee told the more than hundred women gathered. Lee, who is based in Los Angeles, suggested last month at the Upfront Summit in Pasadena that was exploring an investment fund to support women of color in tech. She has declined to elaborate further on those comments, but similar events could help develop a strong network for her efforts.
The event dubbed "Tech Femme Supremacy: The intersection of innovation and advocacy," offers some insight into the direction she may be heading. The chat between founder and chief executive of tEQuitable, Lisa Gelobter, and Tekedra N. Mawakana, chief operating officer at the former Google self-driving car project Waymo, was as much about dispelling some of the mystery around venture capital as it was a discussion about self-worth.
For an hour, the two talked candidly about their own struggles to redefine themselves in a rarefied venture world often populated by white men of means.
Mawakana, a former eBay and Yahoo executive who now is a limited partner at the Operator Collective, admitted that for several years she was handing over investment funds to ventures that didn't align with her values. Often tapped to consult for venture firms, she found that she wasn't reaping the full benefits of her work.
"I was like, 'Why do I keep doing these meetings?' I'm doing the meetings as a favor to the venture people. But the reality is I'm setting myself up to be a dooer. And what I want to be is an investor, who gets paid when the organization that's looking for my help succeeds. And so I pivoted," Mawakana said.
"I realized that nobody was going to change the way I valued myself, that I was going to have to change the value to myself," she said.
Gelobter, who served a stint as Chief Digital Service Officer for the Department of Education in the Obama administration and later helped launch Hulu, said she didn't realize it was all about raising capital when she entered accelerator Y Combinator. The two found a receptive audience in a room largely filled with black women, including investors from top flight firms and founders looking for funding.
Many identified with Gelobter and Mawakana, who often found themselves dealing with issues their male or white counterparts didn't have to.
About $136.5 billion in U.S. venture funding was spent last year. All female founders claimed only 2.6% of that, according to PitchBook. And the number for women of color was even slimmer.
Gelobeter said that growing up she didn't know or understand that investment and entrepreneurship were about wealth creation. "From where I come from, that's not a thing that I knew or had an understanding and the truth is like, I'm still struggling with it," she said. "That's not why I got into this, I wanted to make change."
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Snap’s parental controls.
Courtesy of Watchful.
Snapchat is planning to introduce Family Center, which would allow parents to see who their children are friends with on the app and who they’ve messaged within the last seven days, according to screenshots provided by Watchful, a product intelligence company. Parents would also be able help their kids report abuse or harassment.
The parental controls are still subject to change before finally launching publicly, as the Family Center screenshots—which were first reported by TechCrunch—reflect features that are still under development.
Santa Monica-based Snap and other social media giants have faced mounting criticism for not doing more to protect their younger users—some of whom have been bullied, sold deadly drugs and sexually exploited on their platforms. State attorneys general have urged Snap and Culver City-based TikTok to strengthen their parental controls, with both companies’ apps especially popular among teens.
A Snap spokesperson declined to comment on Friday. Previously, Snap representatives have told dot.LA that the company is developing tools that will provide parents with more insight into how their children are engaging on Snapchat and allow them to report troubling content.
Yet Snap’s approach to parental controls could still give teens some privacy, as parents wouldn’t be able to read the actual content of their kids’ conversations, according to TechCrunch. (The Family Center screenshots seen by dot.LA do not detail whether parents can see those conversations).
In addition, teenage users would first have to accept an invitation from their parents to join the in-app Family Center before those parents can begin monitoring their social media activity, TechCrunch reported.