Airtable Black History Month Employee Spotlight: A conversation with Chipo Steven and Wesley Mann
To commemorate and kick off Black History Month we’re proud to be spotlighting two employees doing impactful work here at Airtable. Chipo Steven is a strategic customer success manager and Wes Mann is a product manager at Airtable. Chipo shares the pressure of “code switching”, the idea that you sometimes have one personality at work versus at home and how growing her confidence over the years has helped her bring her true self to work. She also talks about her decision to take on a leadership role within Airtable’s BlackViews ERG. Wes walks us through finding out that his great, great grandparents were slaves in the South and why he sees Black History Month and Juneteenth as opportunities for reflection. He’s thinking carefully about how his actions can influence the conversations future generations of his family will have about Black History, it’s something he doesn’t take lightly.
Please tell us your name, pronouns, role at Airtable, and how long you have been at Airtable.
Chipo: My name is Chipo, my personal pronouns are she/her and I am one of the customer success managers for the strategic segment in London. I've been working at Airtable for just over 8 months now.
Wes: You can call me Wes, my pronouns are he/him. I am a product manager here at Airtable. I work on enterprise, specifically on the organization management pod that deals with allowing our customers to map their organizational structure and workflows to the product. I’ve been here a little over two years.
What is one thing that we would be surprised to know about you?
Chipo: So one thing people might be surprised to know about me is that I actually wasn't born in the UK. I moved over to London when I was about five or six years old. I was born in Zimbabwe, so I think because I've been in the UK for such a long time people always assume that I've been here all my life. My mom is one of seven. We have a lot of family in Zimbabwe, Australia, and Canada, so, growing up as a kid, I always used to go to Zimbabwe every single year for summer.
Wes: I played ultimate frisbee in college and we were really competitive. I went to Nationals for like three or four years. I also really like golf. I’m not very great at it but it helps me destress. I didn't play this actively until I became around 29/30 years old. I realized, wow! This is something that allows me to like to focus on self improvement and I'm a self improvement junkie.
Can you give us an overview of your career journey and what brought you to Airtable?
Chipo: When I was finishing the end of my degree, I was pretty set on becoming a management consultant. I was convinced “this is what I want to be!” Then I got a job working at KPMG, which was a massive thing, I think, especially when you look at the demographic of people of color working in these types of corporate roles and also when we look at the socio-economic demographics. Getting that job was a big thing.
I really wasn't into consulting the way I thought I would be, I was working in a team that specialized in financial management for a number of years. I did an internal secondment at KPMG which was focused on technology deployments and adoption which I loved. I explored working in Customer Success and this experience helped me to land my first tech role at Freshworks. I loved it, loved the team that I was working with and then one of my previous colleagues who works in the London office reached out and said , hey, “Airtable has just opened an office in London”. When I got the offer at Airtable I thought to myself that it would be very silly of me not to take this role. Airtable had just opened up in the UK and it felt like there was a lot of opportunity to be part of something that's really growing within an exciting space.
Wes: In college I went in knowing I wanted to be an investment banker. I studied game theory, economics and statistics. I then worked at Morgan Stanley for 2 years as an investment banking analyst.
Next, I landed at a company called Smart Asset, which does personal finance calculators. They were looking for someone who could build financial models for their calculators at first, but the role eventually would become a product manager which was something I was curious about. Two years later I joined a company called Turvo, which focuses on collaborative enterprise software for shippers, brokers, and carriers. That was fun because I was previously doing transportation investment banking, but now building on my product management expertise.
I first found out about Airtable from my wife. I hopped into it and was like this is really fun. I started using it in my personal life and then I realized how much I could build for a company in Airtable. Most enterprise software is just a data layer, an interface, and logic. You can upend so much generic software. If you just actually put Airtable in the hands of someone who knew their workflow better than anyone else and just think about all the use cases and possibilities that Airtable can actually provide, that, like kind of blew me away. When I thought about that, I'm like I have to work here.
How has Airtable demonstrated an inclusive culture? And how do you get that sense working here?
Chipo: One of the things I was really impressed with when I joined Airtable was the Black Views ERG. I joined towards the end of the year, heard about all the events that had been done for things like Black History month, and just seeing the community of people together has been really nice.
Outside of the Black Views ERG, my colleagues are so supportive. Everyone is really in tune with working with people from diverse backgrounds. That's so important, because ultimately, if you work with people who don't necessarily respect who you are as a person, and where you come from it can make it very challenging.
I can't hide the fact that I'm Black and I don't want to, but I also think when it comes to working in tech there is not as much diversity. In the UK, there's only 0.1% of Black women who work in tech. We're pretty much invisible, so that can make you really self conscious when you come into an organization where you don't see people who look like you. When I was joining the company, part of the interview process was understanding people who I'm interacting with.
Wes: This is the highest number of Black people that I have worked with in a professional setting probably outside of Morgan Stanley, and for me that was really refreshing. That's one aspect of inclusion, just feeling represented as opposed to kind of being one of the few people that look like you. But I think a more important aspect of inclusivity is respecting different opinions.
Working at Airtable, it doesn't really matter where an idea comes from, and yes, this may sound cliche, but the best thinking is typically what gets bubbled up to the top. We're trying to elevate the best option for the customer and the company, not just whose title is highest. A lot of inclusivity for me personally, is having the trust that everyone that you are working with was hired for a reason and you can assume a baseline level of competence and passion that people are bringing to work.
In other professional settings like, there's like a ton of bias, that hasn't been my experience with Airtable. It's been like we're getting down to work. We're trying to accomplish something. It's something that's difficult. We're gonna work through it. That may not be like the most typical definition, but it's really refreshing for me.
How are you involved with the Black Views ERG? How has this impacted your time at Airtable?
Chipo: When I joined Airtable I was just one of the members of Black Views. When they had the application open up for some new co-leads to Black Views I decided to take the opportunity to apply and I got it. I wanted to be involved in something that I am passionate about which is the advancement of Black identifying Airtablets. It's not necessarily just about career advancement, but also things like financial wellness, health and relationships, because it all plays into each other. It's not necessarily just about work. It's all related.
In terms of how it has affected my experience, one of the things in the London office is obviously it's a much smaller office. In the U.S. there are a lot more people within Black Views. So when I've had the opportunity to come over to the U.S. for things like, kickoff, it's really great to actually meet people in person. I think the main thing is really just being surrounded by people who look like you. It's such a significant thing, and it makes such a huge impact on how you feel about yourself and how you feel about work.
Wes: The camaraderie among the Black Views community and subculture means a lot to me, knowing that it exists, it’s a place where I can share opinions, whether it's serious or full of humor. Its sheer existence is really beneficial. Also every year we do Black Jeopardy, one of my favorite events every single year. It's super fun.
What does Black History Month mean to you? Is there any particular way that you like to celebrate?
Chipo: I think, growing up when I was at school a lot of the things you learned about were pretty much World War I, World War II, you only learned a little bit about things like slavery and colonization but that didn't necessarily give me a full view of really, What is Black history? What is Black culture outside of what I am told?
But as an adult, when it comes to my time outside of the workplace, for example, a lot of it has now been spent on learning Black history - for example, reading books by black authors. Black History Month to me, is really about celebrating Black culture, and how far we've come, but also celebrating the differences and nuances within that culture, because I think sometimes people can see Black people as being the same, a monolith, and we're all very different. So I think it's really just an opportunity to celebrate the similarities, the differences, and all the achievements and the role models that we have in the UK that represent someone like me. Seeing that representation now really does help when celebrating these moments.
When it comes to things like Black History Month it’s also celebrating the culture with things like music, and it has evolved so much. If you look at the media, genres like Afrobeats. Afrobeats is massive, whereas, 10 years ago could I confidently say that at school that I was listening to that? Probably not; whereas now, people, wear it with pride.
Wes: When I was younger, I took it for granted like, oh everyone celebrates Black History Month. As I've gotten older, I’ve realized that weight and importance does not necessarily apply to everyone.
This is going to come off as odd but I didn't know until a couple of months ago that my great great grandparents were slaves in the South. I found out from a grandmother that her parents just came out of the Reconstruction era.
So for me there's a bunch of reflection on, Why is it important? Why is it important to have a month that reflects on people like me and my history and it requires me to think more inward for my own family. How should we be thinking about our own family history in dealing with the things that Black history has obviously done to our country. How do I want my understanding to come off to my little brothers, my potential future children, generations after me? It's more important for me to have a particular idea, definition, and purpose behind celebrating it then, just to do it because it's on the calendar.
It's a similar question that I've been asking myself around the holiday Juneeteenth. A couple of years ago, it gained more national prominence, and now is a federal holiday. I've discussed with my friends, Why should I celebrate this? It's kind of this fresh opportunity for me to think. I can determine this identity for myself and my family that will then be picked up, and influence others. So how I think about it is actually extraordinarily important to me, because it's setting this example.
How has your experience as a Black individual shaped your present-day identity and what is it like being Black in Tech?
Wes Mann: It has had an extreme impact on forcing me to reconcile how society views me. The biases that are put on me in people's viewpoints, and my self worth.
It is a constant stream of thought because I have members in my family, who are very, very staunch believers that you should not blame slavery for all your problems. I have other family and friends that think that you should recognize your history and the impacts of history on your current condition and standing within society. I think both of these are actually extraordinarily important.
Me being Black gives me particular disadvantages, but being a man gives you particular advantages, being a Black man gives me particular disadvantages. I'm also a kid with a Harvard degree, and having that name on my resume, gives me so many advantages compared to other people, that it would be wrong for me not to recognize the leg up. Does that fundamentally mean that I am better for a particular job? Not necessarily. Everyone has their own advantages and disadvantages in life. You can either worry that the world doesn't like you, and is set up against you or you could do what everyone else is doing, which is leveraging their advantages as much as possible to do what they need to survive.
When it comes to being Black in tech it can be pretty lonely at times to be totally frank. At my job here this is the most Black individuals that I have worked closely with at a company, but also, I'm a product manager. There aren't that many Black product managers in tech. So when I look for mentorship or advice, all those places that I'm getting mentorship and advice, many of those people don't look like me, or the life experiences they have are probably fundamentally different.
Chipo: That's definitely a big question. I would say it is tough for sure when you're surrounded by people who don't look like you. I think everyone experiences impostor syndrome to an extent but I feel like when it comes to adding additional layers that say, being a woman and being Black.
There's also that intersectionality, and that can make things complicated. Because when you experience certain things in the workplace, you're wondering, “Did it happen because that person is just being that way? Or did it happen because I'm Black? Or did it happen because I'm a woman, or did it happen because I'm a Black woman?” And it really does impact how you then choose to behave in the workplace. For example, you know you have your at-home personality, versus the personality you might have at work. We talk about things like code switching where you speak in a certain way to your friends, your family, but at work you have a different voice, a different persona. I’d say that definitely has influenced me throughout my career.
When I started out in my first job. I was working in a corporate organization which I'll say the people at the top definitely didn't represent me, and that was challenging because I felt like I had to put on this persona to fit in with everyone else. Over the years I have become at one with myself. I still have wobbles, and I still question myself in many scenarios but I feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more confident in who I am, and I think part of that is also picking the companies that you work at carefully, so that you can feel like you can be your best self at work.
Everyone needs to play their part. We still have a lot to go in terms of improving representation in these organizations, and not just at the entry level of just coming in, but also at senior levels as well. Because if you don't have people in senior positions, how can you expect that you can climb the ranks as well?