Originally published on Medium by Glenesha Grant as part of her “5 Coffees, 5 Days w/ Black Product Managers” series. Our first feature is with Monica Ugwi, a Product Director @ Shopify. Monica is a product leader with over a decade of experience building meaningful products for millions of users. She has deep technical expertise and leads with empathy for users and her teams. She is obsessed with using technology to make lives better. Monica has built products at Shopify, Google, Facebook, as well as in startup settings. She holds a degree
Intuit is hiring on pocitjobs.com As VP, Chief of AI & Data Operations, Sharon Hutchins leads business operations and program management for Intuit’s AI+Data organization. The company, which specializes in financial software, was recently in the spotlight after announcing an important goal: to increase female representation in the company’s technology roles from 30% to 37% by 2024. It’s a mission that Sharon 100% backs as she believes there’s room for everyone at the top. Before landing her senior leadership position, Sharon’s journey has been one of taking risks and not allowing
The Lip Bar Inc., the holding company for the beauty brands The Lip Bar and Thread Beauty, has closed a new funding round. The $6.7 million round, led by Pendulum, will focus on expanding The Lip Bar and Thread Beauty’s distribution as well as incubating a third beauty brand. Endeavor and The Fearless Fund also contributed to the fund. Melissa Butler, the business’ founder and Chief Executive Officer, said the round came after years of consistent growth unencumbered by the pandemic. “Our lip sales were crazy during the pandemic—we sold
Lagos-based fintech, Duplo, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding. The seed funding round, led by Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator, will help Duplo launch new products and expand its business into new sectors in Nigeria. The fintech platform, founded by Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa in September 2021, has become one of Nigeria’s top fintech platforms, helping African organizations seamlessly collect payments from their clients and partners. In February, the startup managed to raise $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by pan-African VC firm
Equitable inclusion platform 1000 Black Voices has partnered with The British Consulate to launch their accelerator program dedicated to helping support the ambitions of Black tech founders. The partnership will be focused on breaking down the obstacles faced by Black tech founders, particularly when scaling and growing their business. The program kicks off on September 21 and will run until the end of this year. “Ultimately, a lack of venture funding has resulted in a challenging environment for marginalized founders to tackle and get their business off the ground,” said 1000 Black
“I got my job through Twitter 🎉” I never thought that I’d be the one saying those words. I’ve always seen posts of people from tech Twitter who have shared that they got a job on Twitter or that online presence helped them secure a job. Little did I know that I would be a witness to this too. Welcome to all, and thank you for taking your time to read about my journey of how I got into tech, the challenges I’ve faced, the resources I’ve used, how I
Ingressive Capital, a $10 million venture capital fund launched by Maya Horgan Famodu with its headquarters in Nigeria, celebrated a five-year-mark last week. Horgan Famodu launched Ingressive when she was just 25. Today, at the age of 31, her fund is focused on leveling the playing field for female entrepreneurs: about 40% of its portfolio companies are founded or co-founded by women. In 2020, Ingressive doubled its fund to $10 million, with backers that include Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund, Michael Seibel of Y Combinator, Techstars, and others. The fund that invests
“Try not to use the word minority, say underprivileged or underserved; otherwise, if you say minority, investors will make certain assumptions.” “What assumptions?” “Oh, you know…” That was an interaction between a first-time Black founder and a white venture capital (VC) investor who was supposed to be advising her. Speaking to POCIT, she said she felt several investors she had spoken to had an unconscious bias towards her as a founder and the audience she was targeting. While she understood POC markets were ‘small’ in her native country – on
Public protests demanding justice for Black people killed by police have brought a reckoning to the business world, with executives forced to resign, companies overhauling internal policies, and employees quitting in protest. For the tech industry, this reckoning has been going on in some form since 2014. The industry, which prides itself on agility, had previously failed to move the needle on workplace diversity and take complaints seriously. While there’s been an improvement over the years, some may argue it’s still failing to take robust action. In October 2019, Pinterest, a giant in the sector,
Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO regularly tops the UK charts, pulling in 6.6 million streams a month and more than £1 million ($1.2 million) a year in advertising. He’s had a roster of high-profile guests, including Molly-Mae Hague, Craig David, Liam Payne and Piers Morgan, and despite this, he still says: “I don’t think of myself as an interviewer or a podcast host.” In an interview, the man who seemingly has it all reveals some truths about his journey. He is, after all, the millennial who dropped out of university
