Say The Right Thing

The founders of BLACK WOMEN TALK TECH on the three questions that will maximize your time with a mentor.

Esosa Ighodaro, Regina Gwynn, and Lauren Washington, all entrepreneurs and women of color, saw each other for years at various events ut never formally met. “Since we were the only chocolate drops in the room, as we like to say, we would wonder who those other young women were,” Gwynn says. When they finally got together for a lunch, they discovered that they all faced similar challenges, from finding the right team members to getting enough funding to expand. That’s why they launched Black Women Talk Tech: to share knowledge, resources, and investment opportunities with other WOC entrepreneurs. The group hosted its first conference at Google’s New York office in 2017, followed by another at Microsoft earlier this year. Drawing from their experience, they’ve come up with three questions to ask in any mentorship scenario—and one question to avoid.

DO: “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS RELATIONSHIP?”