Creating a community - Charlene Hunter MBE

00:00

... knowing that someone's life could have changed, one, because of tech, is fantastic, and two, because of the community coming together, is amazing as well. So that's the impact. It's knowing that we can impact somebody who's life could just get a bit better. It could be the principle engineer and now they've got a community where they can use to hire more Black women to be in tech and they know that they're creating that change, and that's made them feel better, that makes it worth it. Or if it's somebody who never thought this was something they could get into because they've never had a computer before, and now they've been able to completely change their life, then that makes it worth it.

00:45

Our parents make such an impact on our life and we can sometimes be a mixture of both our parents. Are you more one than the other?

01:00

No, it's like I'm an exact mix. So my dad has a tech company and my mum has a training company, and I run tech training. And I'm like, "Oh. Well, okay."

01:09

You're kidding.

01:13

But I wasn't expecting it. So yeah, it's like I'm an exact mix of my parents. And I didn't want to do it, it just happened, and I think it's because it's always been in my life.

01:23

That's so funny, that you take the exact same from both. Did you not feel pulled in one direction or the other?

01:29

So I guess, a time I felt pulled, because obviously I've been in the tech world for a long time and my dad's tech focused. But my mum, because of the training that she's done on the empathy side and the caring side, so it's very much an equal pull. And I think that all the skills I have are because of both of them, without one being greater than the other.

01:55

Does that give you a deeper sense of satisfaction in your work, knowing that you're almost kind of mixing together their pursuits?

02:08

I think so. I think that every achievement that I make feels like an achievement of my parents. So every single time that something good happens, not just to me but anybody in the community, I thank my parents, that they made it happen, because they set that foundation.

02:26

So my dad has a tech company, my mom has a training company, they got together and made community based organizations, and I watched all of that growing up, with this hope that one day I could be the same.

02:39

So now I get to do it. So it's every achievement, I'm like, "Hey mom, thank you so much. Hey dad, thank you so much for these skills, because now it's not just me, it's going out everywhere across the community and it's fantastic." So yeah, I think it increases it massively.

02:59

In some ways, you hit on what I think a lot of people miss, this ability to celebrate something that's greater than yourself. I guess, today we've lost a lot of our faith. We're more individualistic as a society. And therefore, on the one hand, I think people see that as good. But on the other hand, it's difficult because you don't have those ideals or those things to celebrate. And if you look back at the greatest people in history, they often have been almost like messengers of a greater thing in some way. I can't think of anyone throughout history who I admire, who I've admired because they were themselves. It was almost that they represented something greater. And it's so nice that at a family level you can embody that.

03:58

I get what you mean, actually. Normally, we don't look back on history and think that person worked really hard in that job that they did day to day, that no one ever heard about. It's the people that have an impact, the people that you can look to as role models that are influencing loads of people. And to have that in a family is fantastic.

04:17

People always say, "Who are your mentors?" And I start off by saying, "I don't have any mentors." Then I realize that my parents are my mentor every step of the way. When we are trying to figure out how to write bids, when we're trying to figure out how to do accounts, or marketing, or networking, I go to them because I've seen them doing it my entire life. And then, I become the full embodiment of who they are and what they were standing for.

04:42

Does it ever restrict you?

04:44

No, not really. I don't think so. I think it just encourages me. I think because I know it makes it worth it for them, it makes it worth it for the whole reason that we're in the UK at all. So I don't feel it restrictive. I think it just makes me want to go further because it's not just about me, it's about what their dreams were. It's about my grandmother's dreams, it's about all of that. So it doesn't feel restrictive. It makes me feel like I can do anything if I wanted to.

05:21

It sounds like your work and the way that you define the success of your work is almost less about how you perceive what you do day to day, but in some way it's more about the history, the meaning, the impact that you're making outside of your self. If it goes all the way back to your grandparents and the way that your grandparents give you that meaning, that feels very different to how I think a lot of people see meaning in their work.

06:06

A lot of my jobs, I felt like it's worth it. I can't do a job where it's just for the sake of it, if you know what I mean. I just can't. But this is the first time where every step, I don't just thank my parents, I thank my grandmother as well, because I wanted to make sure that... No, I'm not doing any of this to make sure that they've achieved what they wanted, but it just makes it more worth it knowing that because of decisions that people made before me, I'm now able to impact people, and that's what they would've wanted. So it just makes it more exciting to know that that's something we're able to do.

06:49

What were the origins of Coding Black Females?

06:53

The origins of Coding Black Females, so I've been... Well, I'm not really a software developer anymore unfortunately, because I don't get time. But I've been a software developer, if you will, for 14 years. And I used to go to conferences, I used to go to events, all sorts of things. And I just didn't meet any Black women in tech and I wasn't looking to meet Black women in tech, I just hadn't met any.

07:22

So I wanted to then just get a chance to meet some people. So I created a community to do that. I started meeting Black women in tech. It's finding out what people's other backgrounds were, that's when I found out about boot camps. I'd never heard of boot camps before. I started finding out about other technologies that I've not heard of before, and having conversations about tech, people's backgrounds, the reasons people are in tech, and things like that.And then, it's kind of become more than just a community. It's a place people can come to expand and fulfill their tech dreams, that sounds big. But if people want to get into tech, or they want to get trained, or if they want to start training other people, if they want to mentor people, we've got ways for people to make that happen. So it started because I wanted to meet Black women in tech. And now, we've got this fantastic way of Black women in tech connecting, but also access in the industry that previously a lot of people may not have thought was for them as well.

08:23

It's funny how when you're talking about your dad running a tech company, that's obviously had a massive impact on you, but I can't even imagine a scenario where you would've done your job and been the only Black female and be a software engineer and never see another one if it hadn't been for your dad. It's kind of beautiful that you then become that for other people, because it was the only reference point that you had. And so, however you've done it, you've then built something that becomes the reference point for other people.

09:13

I think I know what you mean. So when I used to work with my dad or at my dad's, at that point, I wasn't thinking about Black women in tech. I was thinking about the fact that I didn't want to work in IT, I didn't want to work in technology. I thought it was a weird industry. I thought it was a dying industry and nobody was going to have [inaudible 00:09:32]. That's what I thought when I was younger. And I wanted to go into accounting, so I didn't actually want to do it.

09:40

It was when I went to uni and I continued working for my parents and I built a website for someone and I was like, "Oh my God, I loved gathering requirements, and I loved building it, I loved testing it, and it felt amazing," and then I just wanted to do that every day. And then, knowing that now other Black women don't go to work as the only Black woman in tech that they've ever met is absolutely fantastic. It's been a really nice thing to see. There's some people that didn't realize that there was a problem because of the community. And then they go to the top-

10:18

Really?

10:20

Yeah. They're like, "Why are we doing this?" And I'm like, "Well, because there's no Black women in tech. Not that there were none, obviously there's loads of us as well, but there's not enough.

10:29

There's not enough.

10:30

Yeah. And then, they'd go up to the jobs, and they're like, "Oh, we get it now. We've seen it." But because we started in a community for Black women in tech and that's where we got inspired and then we got trained here, their whole started journey was with other Black women who were wanting to be in the industry, who were already in the industry. And then, they enter and they're like, "Oh, it's a bit different."

10:52

So a lot of the companies that we're working with were saying, "Okay, let's actually create programs to get more than just one person off our program. Let's get a few in." Obviously, through the normal routes, we still want people to apply, we still want people to go through the normal education process. But then, people are not starting on their own and they've got people that they're joining organizations with, which is definitely not what I had when I started out.

11:16

God, so amazing that people feel like it's normal in that circumstance. It must be quite a shock, I guess, when it's different.

11:31

I don't know. Obviously, we also live in the world. We also live in the UK. So there's not Black people everywhere and that's clear. So it's not that much of a shock. I just think that sometimes it's nice to be aware with people who understand you. And sometimes understanding is greater when you've got similar backgrounds.

11:55

That's really interesting because I think a lot of people see it and the they'll miss the fact that it's about shared understanding and it's about being able to be with a group of people where you can so freely share understanding. I think a lot of people miss that.

12:20

There's something nice about just breathing, if that makes sense. I think that's nice.

12:35

Gosh, such a nice quote that, just breathing.

12:39

I feel like I'm definitely not the first person to have said that.

12:43

It's so true though. They do just need a chance to breathe.

12:49

What obstacles do you think Coding Black Females removes for people early on in their career?

12:57

For people early on in their career, I think one thing that it removes is the fact that... So one of the things we're looking at is removing barriers to entry. A lot of organizations in the tech space or in industry, historically, they'll recruit based on the university you've gone to, having access to the right equipment, so that you can have done things in the past, or having the time to be able to work extra jobs, or take on free work, so you've got experience and things like that, and not everybody's had that.

13:35

So one of the barriers is that we're removing the fact that you need to have gone through certain universities that may have only been open or accessible to people from certain backgrounds, I would say. So I think that's one thing, it's working with companies to say, "Actually, you need to look at more than just Redbridge, more than just Oxbridge. There's more places where you can get really, really quality candidates. There's more routes into tech as well."

14:10

So things like the boot camp training, we offer a lot of self-learning courses as well. Things like that mean that people have options. And for me, when I think of access and anything like that, it's all about choice. You have to give people choice and we try to give choice and options to people who... Some who may not have had it or some who may not have thought of it. They might have only thought of university, and we're like, "There's this other route," and that's absolutely fine as well. So it's worth for people to say, "Look, this is valid, this is a route that is a viable one." And that's on the organizational level. But also for those individuals.

14:50

A lot of what we provide, we provide childcare vouchers when people are training with us. We provide wellbeing sessions. We give people laptops if they need them. So there are no barriers to entering the industry. And then, you actually get a really good mix of people from all backgrounds. So say we did this across the industry for anyone with any background, you then get people from all backgrounds being able to work in the industry, which is what we need, because everyone uses technology and we need all [inaudible 00:15:22], isn't it?

15:25

What do you struggle with most? Is it getting Black females to think about tech, or is it enabling those who are already thinking about it to get into it?

15:48

To be honest, there's a lot of Black women who want to get into tech and who are already in it. Obviously, we've already said numbers aren't high enough, but that's definitely not a problem. There's also no problem in enabling those people either because we provide everything we can to enable people who may not have access to what they need.

16:11

One thing that we're trying to do is show people that, and I'm not saying people shouldn't go into law or they shouldn't go into accounting, because they are obviously fantastic careers-

16:20

Brits shouldn't go into accounting, apparently.

16:24

We're trying to also say, "Here is tech." So people that may have gone down those sorts of paths, we're also trying to say, "You can use those skills here in tech. If you've been an architect in the past, you can use some of those skills in tech." If you've been a chef or other careers that I can't think of, we want people to see that this is also an option, that the skills that they have can line up with the tech industry too.

16:52

So for me, I don't think it's a hard thing to do, to try and let people know that the tech industry is something that's out there, that they can access. It's just something that we have to do. We all have to do it. We all have to be part of this. Because if we don't, we're just not going to have people around to build everything that we need to build in the future.

17:17

When you look towards your future now, how will you define what makes your work meaningful?

17:30

The thing that makes the work meaningful is the impact that we're having. I do get excited when we get new partners on board, that's fun, great. And it's fun when we win awards and things like that. But the thing that makes me really happy is when I get an email or a call from somebody in the community who said because of something that happened with Coding Black Females, even if it's because of the community, "I met someone who told me about this other community, and because of that, now my life has completely changed," that's what makes it meaningful to me. Knowing that someone's life could have changed, one, because of tech is fantastic, and two, because of the community coming together, is amazing as well.

18:15

So that's the impact. It's knowing that we can impact somebody who's life could just get a bit better. And it could be that they're a principle engineer and now they've got a community where they can use to hire more Black women to be in tech and they know that they're creating that change. And that's made them feel better, that makes it worth it. Or if it's somebody who never thought this was something they could get into because they've never had a computer before and now they've been able to completely change their life, then that makes it worth it.

18:48

So there's so many ends of the spectrum, but essentially what it's important to see is that people's lives are improving and I think that's what matters the most. That's what I look for. That's what gets me excited. Every time we get a new project, I think about the impact on those people. If that means that they can be more influential in industry, if that means that they can get other jobs or have other job access in the future, that's fantastic.

19:22

It's a bit like a drug, isn't it? It must be so amazing to have these people in your community keep coming back and saying these things. I can't imagine how that must feel and it must almost be addictive in a way.

19:43

It's just exciting. It just helps. Because everybody on the team, we work so hard. Anybody who knows us, some of us don't sleep, we just work all the time. And it's those messages that help us to keep going, because we know it's worth it. It's not that it's addictive, it's just knowing that it's worth it.And sometimes. You don't get one for ages and it's not that I then feel bad, I just feel like, "Are we not doing enough? We need to do make sure we're doing the right things. Let's make sure we're giving people what they actually need," Not so that we can get the messages, but so that we know we're having that impact. I don't need the messages, I just know that people are actually benefiting from it.

20:26

How will you know when your mission's achieved?

20:31

So I guess, that there's a few ways to look at it. At the moment, I think we've just done looking at the stats of Black women in tech. The numbers are low. I think we're at 0.7% in the UK at the moment. And I can't remember what the number's supposed to be, but it's far too low. When that number is more correct, then okay, that's on the right journey. When we see adequate representation of Black women in leadership positions, in tech organizations, on boards, things like that, then we know that we're on the right journey, we're going in the right direction. When we see technology that's delivered, not providing negative experiences for Black people that use it and for women that use it, then we know that we're doing the right thing.

21:21

Sometimes I think you look at the past, you look at the fact that there's always been people trying to make change for racism and for people's access to different things, and we're still having some of the same conversations that we've been having for the last 50 odd years, longer than that. And I'm like, "Oh, maybe that journey's going to be a bit longer than I thought it was going to be." But the key thing is that we're seeing change, we got to continue to see change.

21:54

Impact is one thing, and turning it into something concrete is another, I guess. How did you make the decision to go all for it? And was there a sign that you could?

22:14

It was a really hard decision. So I guess, to give you a bit of background about Coding Black Females and how we've been running, so we started in 2017 as a meetup group, completely voluntary obviously. We're now five years in, and it's a very different space to what it was five years ago.

22:33

But at the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020, at some point, we ran a workshop and, I remember finding people within the community to come and deliver this workshop. And I was like, "Yeah, you're all going to get paid. I'll make sure you'll get paid for delivering this work, because you're taking time out of your day to do this and I need to make sure that your time is valued." So I just took some money out of my pocket and made sure that everyone got paid because I wanted everyone to know that their time was valued.

23:04

And then, someone approached me and said, "Do you want to run a coding boot camp together?" And I was like, "Do you know what? Yeah, that's always something that is on my plan. And we planned to bid for this at some point. And great, you've come to me." Things fall on my lap normally when they're supposed to. So she came to me and said, "Let's do this." So we put bid together, went through it. And I was working full-time at that point. And I was like, "Gosh, if this comes through, what am I going to do? Because I've got a job and I haven't really got time to run a boot camp on the side." But anyway, we won it.

23:43

That sounds like quite a lot.

23:44

Yeah. We won it. So then, I found people in the community and allocated everyone different sections of the boot camp to build. I wrote a curriculum for it. And then, we started building this boot camp. And I had a full-time job, and at the same time, we were recruiting candidates onto a boot camp. We were interviewing. There were days that I was interviewing people all day and recruiting people all night. And all I was doing was interviewing people to be software developers, that's all I did day and night for weeks.

24:16

But over that time, what we also had, obviously we'd won a bid, so we had some income coming into the business as well, which I didn't take any of that because I was like, "We're going to need that to actually deliver and protect our future."

24:27

It's kind of like a government bid or something?

24:30

Yeah. So that was essentially our first investment into the business, was me not paying myself the amount that I was supposed to pay myself, that was allocated to me. But then, what that meant was a year on, when we got it again, we then had enough in there to say, "Okay, we can hire somebody now." And I actually wasn't the first employee of Coding Black females, it was somebody else. So she started working there, which meant that we could answer things and get things done whilst I was working. We won more work. And then I was like, "Well, okay, I guess, I have no time anymore to do a day job. I have to quit. I have no choice but to quit my job now. I haven't got the time." And then, someone came to me and said-

25:15

That kind of made the decision for you.

25:16

Yeah, I know. I had someone come to me and say, "Look, I really want to teach." And I was like, "Do you know what? If we win another bid, I'll get you a job and you can teach on our boot camp full-time." And then, that day, we got confirmation that we'd won a bid.

25:30

Oh, God.

25:31

And I was like, "Great. Here's your contract."

25:34

Wow.

25:34

So there was myself, somebody else who came with me, and somebody else who came on to teach. And then, we all of a sudden had a full time business. Then we started-

25:43

Well, that's kind of less all of a sudden, because you did a fair bit there.

25:48

Yeah, I know. It's funny because whenever we achieve something I'm like, "We've never done this before and we achieved it." And it's like, "No, we've been working really hard for years and we finally are ready to do these things."

25:58

So we'd laid down all the foundations, we were then able to start growing. But then, because we had more time, we could offer more to the community and work with more companies to deliver that. So then, we were able to apply for more funding. We were also able to get more sponsorships. We could hire more people. The fantastic Kickstart Scheme came out at that time as well, so we could get some employees that were covered by the government. And then, we had a team. And now, we are like 14 employees. And I think I quit my job last year, so it's-

26:34

What an amazing story.

26:37

... been really full on.

26:42

We talk so much about decision making and how to make these important decisions in our life, and you have avoided it by just putting yourself in situations where there was no decision to make. In some ways naturally. Sometimes it's so difficult to follow our inclinations and know exactly what direction we should go in, but yet, you've kind of just gone hell for it there.

27:06

I think it depends on how you look at it. So when I actually think about it, I think I'm a risk taker, but I don't think I'm a risk taker at all. I'm actually extremely risk averse from what I can see. So I did a shared load of planning to say, "Okay, if we do this, the reason I'm not going to..." I could obviously have taken income for myself at that point, but I knew that I wanted to make sure that we had an option for the future. So I then looked at how much we'd need to have an option to have people on board in the business for a certain amount of time. So we saved that essentially, so that we could do that.

27:38

And then, I thought about the direction that I wanted the business to go in. And then, a lot of planning went into that and I built out the right elements that we needed. I got the right people on board, that would be able to make that happen. So there's one side where you're like, "Oh, it just fell in your lap." There's another side where it was actually extremely planned and I thought these things fall in my lap, but actually, I've been thinking about it for years.

28:05

So even when I was at uni, I'd been saying to people, "When I leave uni, I want to create a community for Black people. I just don't know what it is yet. But when I create it, will you join?" And they're like, "What is this community?" And I was like, "I don't know what it is yet." So that means that my brain had been thinking about it since I was at uni. And then-

28:22

Where's that coming from?

28:25

I think that's the thing, so I think that's where it goes back to my childhood and watching my parents run communities and have businesses. So all of that was just in me and I knew that there was something I wanted to do, I just didn't know what it was yet.

28:40

So I went to a lot of conferences. And when I was there, I would talk to those people that had ideas. Loads of people that were looking for CTOs, and I wanted to see whose idea I could be a part of and what I could build with other people. So I've been looking for something for a while. And then, I found CBF and CBF found me. And now, we've got this happy mix of everything that we're looking to achieve. So I don't think any of it's an accident. I think maybe I'm actually a planner that plans in my head for ages and then I forget that I'm planning. My brain does loads of work that I don't know about, and then it just arrives.

29:19

It's like a circle, isn't it? It sort of feels like it all comes back and it reflects itself and there's this kind of never ending cycle, whether it's your parents, or your grandparents, or whether it's your community, or whether it's the bootcamp. It feels like they're all the same themes in some way.

29:46

Well, this definitely feels like the right outcome of everything. When I look back, I'm like, "Oh, it was very clear that this was a suitable end point for..." Not end point, this obviously isn't an end point, but-

30:03

It's looks clear from where we're looking now.

30:07

Yes. Really clear externally. For me, it wasn't like that because I was like, "Oh, I don't know what I want to do. I'm going to go down this path." Or, "I know that I want to work in an office," that's all I knew. So maybe externally it seems really clear. Or looking back I'm like, "Oh, that makes sense," but didn't feel it at the time.

30:26

That was so much fun. Thank you for running me through everything. I found it really inspiring, the whole thing.

30:32

Oh, excellent. Thank you. No, that's been really fun. It's been fun to take part.

30:37

Cool.

30:37

All right. Well, thank you. I'll speak you soon.

30:38

Catch you later.

30:38

Take care.

30:38

Bye.