employers face historic talent shortages. It is not hyperbolic to say that America is in the midst of an economic transformation akin to the Industrial Revolution.
Employers and employees alike are finding themselves in unfamiliar territory. While it is tempting to focus our collective effort on returning to “business as usual,” doing so would effectively leave millions of people—primarily Black and Latinx—on the sidelines. Already woefully underrepresented in STEM fields, the rapid pace of technological change has had a particularly pronounced impact on Black and Latinx workers and communities. As we stand at a crossroads, ready to chart a new path to a more equitable future, it is crucial that we bridge the gaps that separate us through a multi‐faceted, multi‐sector approach. We must transform the underlying systems and the mindsets that exacerbate these inequities, which are deeply embedded in the way we invest in technology and innovation, the way we educate our children, and the way we organize our cities and communities.
I first heard Sherrell Dorsey's name at an entrepreneurial conference that brought together entrepreneurs, investors, and thinkers to talk about an often overlooked but thriving world: Black tech. While the Black tech ecosystem is often covered by the media with the assumption of deficits, Sherrell's publication The Plug provides a more nuanced, asset‐based view. Its reporting examines the challenges, the successes, and the potential of Black tech from the standpoint of people of color. Sherrell's media company is an irreplaceable source of truth for those of us dreaming of a world of work that works for everyone. Her book is a guide on how to get there.
In Upper Hand, Sherrell shares her experience of two decades navigating the workforce, first as an employee and now as an employer. With a personal touch and rich in anecdotes and examples, she provides insight into the tech‐driven economy that has largely overlooked Black and brown communities, and also provides recommendations for how the tech ecosystem could diversify, leverage the genius of people of color, and build innovations that benefit everyone.
This book shows what organizational leaders, investors, and workers can do within the current system to make it more equitable. It speaks in an accessible voice to issues that many people of color will readily recognize from their own experience and it brings to the table an experienced, insider view of the tech world. I have drawn on Sherrell's insights many times in my own work leading initiatives to improve the education‐to‐employment pathways for people of color.
This indispensable book is a tremendous contribution to our collective effort to navigate the rapidly changing innovation landscape, and it serves as a guide for how industry stakeholders can work together to build a more equitable world of work.
Dr. Angela Jackson
Dr. Angela Jackson is the Managing Partner of Future of Work at New Profit, a national venture philanthropy organization that backs breakthrough social entrepreneurs who are advancing equity and opportunity in America.
Introduction
Long before I ever sat down to write this book, the unfairness of how innovation and access are distributed among and favor certain communities over others haunted me.
After leaving my hometown of Seattle at 18, drifting across several mid‐size and big cities over the years, visiting home was always deflating. First, there was the excitement of discovering an old‐new city and its latest fanfare of restaurants and elevated shopping experiences, newly installed light rail systems, music venues, and galleries. But when I returned to my old neighborhoods or checked in with old friends and community folks, it was clear that they had not been benefactors of much of the city's growth.
Through the years, in my work reporting on innovation (and lack thereof) in communities of color, I have been frequently reminded of the unfairness of progress. Personally, perhaps by way of proximity, I was able to access opportunities to take part in learning the language, skills, and social networks of technology throughout my childhood and teen years. These small, yet significant, slivers of access empowered me to position myself for a future that would be largely shaped by discoveries and advances neither myself nor my family could have imagined were on the horizon. But those same resources that empowered me were not widely accessible to the vast majority of my peers, let alone the neighborhoods and schools that we were raised in. The evidence of this loss of potential talent and potential for greater social and economic mobility is much more than a by‐product of the passing of time lending itself to growing up and moving out. By design, and in the vast majority of American cities boasting deep innovation centers and entrepreneurship environments, communities of color have been left behind.
“Essential” workers, a moniker we assigned to lower‐wage, service workers at the height of the COVID‐19 pandemic, are largely made up of Black and Latinx people, who remain overrepresented in these fields. As technology advances and machines and robots perform many of the tasks once executed by humans, we're left with a series of questions about how we will ensure that those who are most economically vulnerable can gain access to and learn the skills of the future.
A few years ago, when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was asked to sit on a conference panel with the city's workforce development leaders and other employers to discuss the future of work in Charlotte and beyond. At the time, I was building up BLKTECHCLT, a tech hub I co‐founded with my partners and friends Enovia Bedford and Freda Hendley, that provided networking and training tools to the city's rising Black tech entrepreneur community.
The panel and audience gathered in the basement of Grace A.M.E. Zion Church, a historic African Methodist Episcopal Zion church built in the early 1900s, set in the neighborhood of what is today referred to as Uptown. The conference was hosted by the Charlotte chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Unlike the many fancy tech conferences and gatherings I've attended and reported on around the country over the years, this room wasn't filled with high‐profile CEOs, venture capitalists, or college graduates who'd spent years teaching machines how to think. No, these were regular folks. They were grandparents and caregivers, deacons and truck drivers. The crowd of older men and women were curious about the new world of work, some of them visibly nervous about what that new world meant for them and their families.
I'll never forget my interaction with Ms. Smith (not her real name) that day. She sat in the front row, nodding softly as the conversation ran its course, shifting between keeping her eyes locked with mine and taking notes on the piece of paper she'd retrieved from the black purse that rested in her lap. Next to her sat a slim young man who you could tell was forced to spend his Saturday morning in a place he'd rather not.
During the question‐and‐answer period, Ms. Smith was the first to raise her hand. She shared with us that she had lived in Charlotte her entire life and had watched the city during its many transformations, noting how she had been here before Uptown was built, when folks would have never even thought about living in a boxy apartment in the center of the city. Ms. Smith, as she revealed, was raising her grandson, the young man sitting to her right. She had been raising him since he was a toddler and she was having a hard time feeling confident that she was able to guide him into a good life and career for himself. She came to the panel because she knew technology was important but knew very little about what that meant for folks like her, trying to find opportunities for her grandson.
The city boasted a youth employment program for teens, but there were very few options for young people to get access to paid technology internships. Local schools, depending on where you attended, had few resources for computer science programs. Overall, Ms. Smith didn't have a clear guide on how to navigate the resources available in the city or whether they'd be the right kind of resources her grandson would need to get a job that paid well and would put him on the right path.
After years of toiling with ideas on how to discuss the future
