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Name it. Claim it. Why Black female entrepreneurs should step into their CEO title
Name it. Claim it. Why Black female entrepreneurs should step into their CEO title
Written by
UnLtd employee
UnLtd position
Author: Veronica Gordon, UnLtd Award Winner and Founder of Our Version Media CIC.
“Often when you say CEO we have a particular sort or a bias of what we think a CEO is … it took about three and a half years to call myself a CEO.” – Seyi Akiwowo, founder and “accidental CEO” of Glitch Charity.
Seyi (Shay-ee) Akiwowo is a woman on a mission who is not afraid to shy away from challenges or speak up for those being victimised by others. Seyi’s career to date is evidence of that. She’s a former politician who took up the role to ensure that politics better represented her local community and now, after being the target of racist abuse online, she’s the founder of the award-winning anti online abuse charity, Glitch.
Seyi’s mission, in her own words, is “to make the online space safe for everybody particularly women and girls.” Her charity Glitch is: “making sure that everyone understands what part they can play as digital citizens to keep the online space safe and to demand more from tech companies.”
Seyi seems to step into any role with determination, confidence, and drive. I wonder then, why it is that although she has founded and runs a leading charity, one thing she has struggled to step into, is the title of CEO, chief executive officer. Instead, she opts for the title “accidental CEO.”
As a black female founder of a mission-led organisation myself, I too struggle with calling myself CEO. It doesn’t “feel right” on me. The title seems “too big” for someone like me. So, as I sat looking at Seyi, a phenomenal black female founder, an “accidental CEO”, I wanted to hear more about her resistance to the CEO title and I wanted to know what was so accidental about it!
Turns out the “accidental” part was something that is often the case for many founders. There is an issue, problem or cause and they want to do something about it. In Seyi’s case, she created Glitch after receiving racist abuse online when a video of her speech defending refugees at the European Parliament went viral: “Glitch was birthed out of a lived experience of online abuse back in 2016/2017 and I developed a campaign because I was in politics at the time, so it was easy to push for systemic change and then it quickly evolved. It became this organisation and then in 2020 we got our charity status, so I often say that I didn't choose to be a CEO it was an accidental thing.”
Ok, so that was the public-facing answer. I waited to hear more and here it is, the answer that us black female entrepreneurs share with each other in our private spaces:
“I say “accidental CEO” also because often when you say CEO we have a bias of what we think a CEO is and so by saying “accidental CEO” I’m putting that conflict in there to show the texture that this is different, I'm not your normal CEO. I'm not career CEO and I'm not putting any judgement on that, but this is different. This is coming from lived experience, that's why I'm accidental CEO.”
That was it. The majority of CEOs don’t look like Seyi or me. We’re not the faces that spring to mind when people say CEO. I needed to hear more.
Seyi: “I was called ED – executive director – for ages because of this weirdness to call myself CEO.”
Seyi went on to explain that it was when Glitch appointed a chief operations officer (COO) that she reluctantly took on the CEO title: “I couldn’t be ED and she's COO so I had to embrace it. I was like “OK I'm going to be this accidental CEO”. I think there is something there around why that word feels so foreign to people like us. We don't see enough of us, the stats around women of colour and people of colour who are charity and social enterprise CEOs is very, very small so it’s no wonder why we have this reluctance to say the word CEO. It took about three and a half years to call myself a CEO.”
This made me wonder, could this make it our responsibility, as black female founders, to make that change? To embrace the CEO title and make ourselves more visible? Would this make it easier for others to too?
As we spoke, I saw a skilled woman, with some vulnerabilities, that she wasn’t afraid to share with me. Seyi had achieved so much through Glitch: from being an organisation of one, Glitch now has a growing and diverse staff team. In my short time with Seyi, I gained business insight and learned things that would help me to grow as a social entrepreneur. I wanted to know everything. How did she do it? What tips can I learn to grow my social enterprise? What advice does she have for other female founders? First things first, how did she start?
“Google.com and hanging out with other entrepreneurs” she says before explaining that she had a lot of bad advice at the start: “I wish I had access to organisations such as UnLtd, the Small Charities Coalition and NCVO when I was setting up. I was unsure for a year whether to be a charity or social enterprise. Then I set up an interim board to help me figure out what was the best process, legalities, business plan and all of that and then it naturally flowed from there. We've got some things really well done and then there are still some things that we're still figuring out.”
Seyi says she now benefits from support from others: “I think it's gotten easier as I found more female friends who are founders. We've got a monthly female founders’ lunch to check in and that's really nice. My biggest tip is that stay focused on the vision and the mission, and the milestones will eventually come.”
That’s something I’ve learned as a founder – a support network is crucial. It’s where we learn skills to strengthen our social impact and how to avoid the pitfalls of running an organisation. I asked Seyi to outline three challenges she has faced as a black female founder and for solutions on how to navigate them. Wherever you are in your organisation’s start-up or growth journey, Seyi’s tips will provide essential tips to work on your most important asset – you.
Challenge: Anti-blackness as a black woman – misogynoir.
Solutions: Make sure you've got value-aligned people around you and make sure that anti-racism is a part of those values. Importantly, making sure you're not having to do the teaching. What I’d expect from the sector - what folks like UnLtd and The Charity Commission can do – is making sure that governance, codes, and policies are up to date so that everyone is having responsibility for equity, diversity and inclusion, not just people of colour.
Challenge: Taking rest. When you're a one-woman band, as you grow and when everyone is asking you questions and demanding your time, it can be very difficult to take leave. I ended the year last year with three point two weeks of leave left over and had only taken one sickness day. That is not healthy.
Solution: It’s about making sure you plan rest in even if you don't think you need it – and making sure you have it. This is easier said than done when you are busy and when you are starting out, but it is important.
Challenge: The pandemic. You're working at home, you're eating at home, you're living at home. That's been difficult. At the beginning, from March till June 2020, it was cool, we were all in it together, but then it happened again, and again, and that’s been quite difficult.
Solution: We must be honest. I think we can start to grow a tolerance to the pandemic. We should never be okay with the fact that we’re in a pandemic. We must remind ourselves that Covid is real, long Covid is real and that we need to look after ourselves.
I had one final question for Seyi. She is achieving so much and with Glitch’s impact reaching worldwide, I wanted to know, even though “accidental”, what is it like to be a CEO?
“I feel proud. I feel proud that I've been able to set up an organisation that is sustainable, that has reserves and that can pay myself and other people a wage and that I have executive responsibilities, and I feel agency around that. Prior to that I had impostor syndrome one hundred percent. I didn't know the tools, the language, couldn't find my feet. It felt like I was on a treadmill and just couldn't stop. The transition between founder to CEO was quite hard and it was a challenge to see myself as a CEO but it’s about confidence-building.”
My time with Seyi left me feeling optimistic, empowered and with more confidence in my journey running a mission-led organisation. For now, I’m still Veronica Gordon, founder of Our Version Media, but one day, I will be Veronica Gordon, CEO, Our Version Media.
I hope to be, like Seyi, a black female founder who inspires another to rightfully step into their CEO title.
Find out more about Our Version Media® CIC here.