As a part of ongoing efforts to fight systemic racism and aid in the career advancement of people in the Black community, Lekan Olawoye and his Black Professionals in Tech Network is partnering with a range of well-known Canadian companies.
Lekan spoke with the Globe and Mail about this development with the BPTN late last week. While the full partnership announcement is still to come, several major corporations are already known to be involved including TD Bank, Bell Canada, Rogers, Hootsuite, and PointClickCare. In the piece, Lekan spoke about the importance of the collective work among all these parties going forward, and why it signifies the start of substantial change.
“We are very wary of companies who just come and say, ‘We just want to do an event with you’ – clearly that’s a brand play, and we’re not interested in that,” Lekan said to the Globe.
“These are the companies who are doing the work with the Black tech ecosystem,” he said.
With more than 10,000 members, the BPTN offers companies access to a significant and diverse talent pool that is often outside of their traditional hiring networks. Lekan pointed out that partnering with a group like the BPTN is not only good for inclusion and equity, but also helps to ensure an organization is bringing on the best employees it can.
TD Bank Vice-President of Technology Solutions Colleen Ward spoke in the piece about how TD had already been working with BPTN for over a year and a half, and that BPTN had helped to develop TD’s hiring network and corporate learning programs to be more inclusive.
BPTN’s official announcement about this new partnership program is set to be made later this week.
A passionate advocate for organizational change and lasting progress, Lekan Olawoye is a leader who is equally comfortable offering high-level business advice as he is passionately speaking about how to be an effective ally. His organization, the Black Professionals in Tech Network (BPTN), is the largest of its kind in Canada and the third largest in the US with an organization spanning over 10,000 members. Lekan’s cross-sector experience gives him the skills to foster transformational change and provide critical guidance on harnessing the power of meaningful diversity.
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