With the pandemic, with the protest,
there's this urge to be in more control,
to be more financially stable.
that these workers don't want to go back to work.
No they didn't want to be treated like crap.
I'm good, I believe I'm here outside the building,
I have a small film crew that's following me,
I'm glad to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
from BCU head of the HBCU.
My idea when I came out of college
is that as long as I did a good job,
that people would recognize that.
And as I went into the workforce,
I realized that that wasn't the only thing
They were looking at that I was young,
that I was African-American, that I was a woman,
Her first job was at NASA
and she was super excited about that and so did we.
What I found is that it came with a bit of a culture
that I kind of didn't fit in.
There were all these outside factors that gave people
their impression of me that was outside of my work,
things that I didn't know were there,
was a hard pill for me to swallow.
At one point, my boss told me, she said,
"You need to keep your head down, your nose clean."
Your workplace shouldn't be a battle ground.
And I feel like it is for a lot of Black women.
And we have to get mentally prepared to go into work
because we know what we're going to deal with
and what we're going to encounter and that shouldn't be.
The idea that I needed to not ruffle feathers
or not kind of push for change or for evolution
or for progress in certain areas
it just was not in my nature to do that.
Well, I'm a little bit more rebellious, I guess.
When she was in kindergarten,
we sent her with a snack every day,
the teacher told me she's giving it away to the students
She's always been that way though.
Even as a little girl, she strive for excellence.
She knew what was right and that's what she always did
and she always tried to be in a good example
for whoever was looking at her.
Tiffany was cheerleading at the time.
And she had the choice between cheerleading camp
And she chose the computer camp.
They took apart a computer.
They had to put it back together and make it run.
I think her and her partner was the only ones
I didn't even know what a hard drive was,
but that was really excited for her.
Technology is seeping into every industry,
Is why I told you that, I got to the other side.
It's important to me that I continue to push people
to understand how technology is going to work in their space.
These people are going to be left behind
and I don't want to see my community left behind.
I don't want people to have to go
through what I went through.
I want to be able to help prepare them early,
to show them the shortcuts
and help make their path a little bit easier.
for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
In the past, African-Americans were not able to go to school
We started to have colleges and universities
specifically set aside to give African-Americans
an opportunity to have higher education,
to learn more about the African-American culture,
to learn more about their history.
And in the times that we're living in today,
like a lot of students are choosing HBCUs
because that's just where they feel more comfortable.
they'll get a fair shake there.
It's going to be amazing. Oh my God!
I'm so happy you did this 'cause I want to help other people
get into this line of work.
I figure if I can do it, they can do it.
So my second Salesforce job, I had a manager.
She's amazing. Her name is Rita.
She was probably the most technical person of color
that I had exposure to at that point.
She is super smart. I mean, brilliant.
She knew the answers to everything
so it really impressed me.
I saw a little bit of me in her, another black female,
trying to break into a technical field
and just wanting to have a chance.
I gave her what I always wanted to get,
which was an opportunity.
So Rose's sitting right there.
She's the current executive director of Black Orlando Tech.
When we first moved to Orlando,
we were just looking for other people to be around
who were in the tech space.
And that's when we found Black Orlando Tech.
The visionary that she was, said well,
this would be a great opportunity
to expose people to Salesforce
because when we tell people what our job is like,
oh, I'm a Salesforce consultant.
"Oh, that's amazing that you're a consultant,
Working in the Salesforce space
has been extremely beneficial to me.
As I learned the technology,
I continue to increase my skills, increase my salary,
and it was just like this well-kept secret.
I kept seeing all these stories about different people
and I just didn't see a lot of stories
that included African-Americans.
I decided that I should probably try to tell more people
and see how I can get more people into this space.
After she had gotten these people interested
in Salesforce, it was okay well, now that you're interested,
let's start a program to actually empower and teach you
how to transition into a Salesforce career,
and that's when she started HBCUforce.
Living is expensive, and I tell students is all the time.
I'm all for following your dreams,
but let's make sure you get paid too.
I can help a student secure a job that puts them on a path
that's going to change their life.
and talking about what she's doing and how she's working,
I believe it gives our students that notion of,
That starts to give our students hope.
And once they have that hope,
then it creates a new mindset and how they reached down.
So once they become entrepreneurs,
they start to teach their children differently.
Oh, you just got here right enough time-
Probably the most rewarding moments in my life
when Ryan got his first job, that was her first student.
And that was kind of like the test case.
because it is exactly what I want a student
To get exposed to Salesforce, pick a path,
get hands on paid job experience,
get certified, and be able to pick what company
they want to start their career.
I was a sophomore I didn't really know
but after meeting her, like we kind of got to talk
about different things in the Salesforce ecosystem.
(background music drowns out the speaker)
She's like a second mother to me.
And she checks up on me and helps me stay level headed,
make sure I'm going on the right path.
What he's been able to accomplish
in just one year out of school, not even one year yet
he's going to be such a great kind of example,
and kind of just billboard for the program.
[Cameraman} And squeeze it, just a little bit tighter.
was very interested in the work that I was doing
and he was looking for someone to partner with him.
We both, I believe have a very keen interest
in creating equitable opportunities
for people of color in the tech industry,
which today is the void it.
It was important for us to start (indistinct)
because one of the things I kept running into
is that people weren't getting jobs
because they were being told
they didn't have enough experience.
It's hard to get experience without experience.
All of this is creating this amazing pipeline
that is going to start to trickle out amazing diverse,
black professionals, and over time,
there's just going to be this explosion of people
that are coming through the pipeline.
15 Years ago, when I hired her,
she was "new" to technology and Salesforce.
And she's just grown and blossomed into this leader,
that's doing all these amazing things.
She's going to make a change in a lot of people's lives
I can see her growing her company,
but I think her passion will always be with the HBCUforce.
I hope to inspire others to do service
and to continue to help others because I helped them.
This cycle of someone helped me,
and so I'm going to come back
and I'm going to help the next person.
I hope that people will think to themselves
that you know what, now I should go volunteer,
I should go do this because Tiffany helped me
and so I feel led to go pay that forward.
