\u201cThe first idea came in the early 2000s. I was with one of the two investment banks that I worked for over the course of my career. The current one was a leader on Wall Street on women in leadership. They were one of the first to decide to hold a senior women\u2019s leadership conference. Being one of the most senior in the bank at the time, I was asked to join the planning committee by the CFO, who was our first female CFO.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe was giving an overview of this conference. I was daydreaming about how proud my parents would be about this little black girl in the room where it was happening. I heard the CFO call my name, but I didn\u2019t hear the question she asked. She had to repeat it a second time. She was asking me \u2018How many women of color will be at the senior women\u2019s leadership conference?\u2019 My cheeks flamed, I was so thoroughly embarrassed that I hadn\u2019t thought about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI got in the door, I had drawn the line behind my own heels and I didn\u2019t even think about if my sisterhood would be by my side at that senior leadership conference. I and a few colleagues got together and did the research to answer that question. It turned out there were three of us. Out of 200 white women, three women of color. I said that was never going to happen again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShortly thereafter, I decided that I wanted to make this my career. I launched Springboard and had the opportunity to do research on black women executives. And that\u2019s when I started working with this academic team of which Lex is a member.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black female professionals face the double test of having a place with two minority groups that are generally underestimated and come up short on in the work environment. Alexis (Lex) Smith is an Associate Professor of Management at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University. And her research traverses working environment issues like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":5945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[796,799,798,797],"class_list":{"0":"post-5940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-black-female","9":"tag-black-female-profession","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-profession"},"yoast_head":"\n