Illustration by Avirup Basu
Former Great British javelin thrower Kike Oniwinde founded the BYP (Black Young Professionals) Network after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2016 in an endeavor to harness and elevate the status of the Black community. Often dubbed “the LinkedIn for Black professionals,” the network connects professionals with each other and with business organizations such as Spotify, Accenture, and Deloitte, runs a job board to match career opportunities, hosts diversity events, and works to reduce bias in the hiring process. Today, the BYP Network features over 50,000 members and more than 400 employers from around the world, while its app (iOS and Android) has been downloaded globally.
Kike had the idea for BYP when she studied abroad and met talented Black students that faced similar challenges to those in the UK. Once back in London, a lack of diversity in the workplace coupled with few opportunities to meet others in the city prompted her to take action to change the Black narrative and promote equity in the professional sphere.
For this article, I talked to Kike about how her team has tackled the challenges of the last year, her leadership principles, what it takes to change complex societal problems, and more.
Kiki Oniwinde.What have you and your team struggled with the most during COVID-19? How are you overcoming these challenges?
The biggest struggle has been that we made our work, our lives. I woke up on my laptop and went to sleep on my laptop. I crashed towards the end of last year. It’s so easy to over-work during lockdown. The good news is all of our hard work paid off. We fundraised, grew our team, and now we’ve enforced normal working hours. We encourage the team to go for walks at lunch time and prioritize their mental health.
What are some interesting new ways of working that you’ve seen have a positive impact on your team and BYP members?
The first thing we did was try to make it easy for everyone to have a “working area” in their house. We ordered office equipment, chairs, and notepads, so everyone felt like they had a good space to be productive in. My co-founder and I now work from an office, which is brilliant. We have a clear no-Whatsapp rule. It’s too easy for the personal to merge with the professional. We make time to hang out together as a team every single month. One time we made cocktails, and sometimes we order food from Uber Eats. We take the time to genuinely check in with each other. Our peer-to-peer coffee meets are a new thing we’ve started and I’ve asked the team to put “lunch break” in their calendars. This is a big change, and it feels good! We’re breaking down our own assumptions and biases about presenteeism. It requires ruthlessly prioritizing which feels new too.
What part of how we worked, networked, and led before COVID-19 do you hope will NOT return?
Meetings!
I know everyone is Zoomed-out but we are all using our time way more effectively now. We can get things across the line so much quicker now. Things are rapid and it’s great.
What are you hoping could emerge for networks like yours from these extraordinary times?
Continued member growth. Now anyone anywhere in the world can tune into our webinars. Our network is way more accessible. Our international connectedness is growing and that feels amazing. New friendships are forming. We are able to break down more barriers with our clients and our allies. We can have conversations that in the past might have felt a little uncomfortable – the playing field is levelling because we are all online. I hope we continue to grow from strength to strength.
How did you get to where you are today?
All my experiences have led me to where I am today. Sports were a huge part of my childhood. They gave me resilience, confidence, and strength. Competing internationally at such a high level gave me a global mindset from a very early age. I’ve always had coaches. I grew up learning how to learn from others. I’m very academic so I grasp new concepts and ideas quickly. This makes me good at business. I’m always learning and always upskilling. My internships and early work experiences were influential. I grew up in East London in a multicultural community. Then I landed in the city and found myself surrounded by people who didn’t look like me. This is where it all began. I felt the pain of the problem I’m now on a mission to solve.
What does design mean to you?
Connecting the dots of your imagination. I designed my business. I had a vision, an idea, and a question: how do I change the Black narrative? Well, you build a community of like-minded people all around the world. Now BYP is real and we help each other with business support, funding, and we have a huge network of corporations that want access to that talent. Designing that idea in my head was how I started.
The BYP Network app connects Black professionals, entrepreneurs, freelancers, allies, and corporations, and features community news and job opportunities.What are the key tenets of your leadership philosophy?
Leadership is community. The members of our community are the most important thing to me. My eyes are always on them no matter what is happening. I don’t let myself get distracted by clients – our community comes first. This means we need a huge amount of trust. And empathy. I lead with empathy.
Better leadership means better results. You can’t be what you can’t see.
Kiki Oniwinde.
I think leadership is about creating comfort through discomfort. Being a leader is very uncomfortable. You are always seen. You are always outside your comfort zone. You need a vision and a strategy. You are under pressure to bring in the right people at the right time.
We need more leaders. All our leaders look the same, they are privileged and they are missing so much of what matters. We need leaders that are diverse. All genders. All races. All backgrounds. This is what we need if we want our economy and country to genuinely thrive and grow. Better leadership means better results. You can’t be what you can’t see.
The BYP Network hosts a range of networking events – currently all online – to ensure Black professionals can see themselves represented in all industries.And how do you honor your leadership principles at BYP network?
At BYP our leadership mission is to be the connector. We are the bridge between corporations, government, institutions, and our members. We speak from a place of honesty and insight. We know we’re part of changing the Black narrative and for us this looks like aspiration, achievement, and attainment. That means I need to be all those things!
We use these values to determine how we lead and they are a constant reminder to me of why we do what we do. Our crowdfund was big, bold, and ambitious. I don’t even know where that energy came from. We wanted to raise a million dollars and we did. This has never been done before by a Black network in the UK. We had six weeks to get it all together. We just did it. We raised $1.1 million from 1,200 Black investors and allies. This is aspiration, you can attain it and you can achieve it.
When I started BYP I was trying to find leaders and role models. I have become a role model. I know that because I’m a Black female founder of a multi-million pound company focused on the Black community. This is leading and I genuinely want to see change.
What is your advice to other entrepreneurs working to change complex societal problems?
Be as bold, ambitious, and audacious as possible. And then, start where you are. This might look like research or it might look like being a helper. Join someone else’s vision and you’ll find people who care about the same thing as you do. You are not alone.
When I started BYP I created a survey of 10 questions. That became an email list. That became an event. I did this for 1.5 years before I quit my job and launched BYP full time. The key is design. You have to make your idea real and learn by doing. You have to connect the dots of your imagination.
To learn more about Kike and her work, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn and check out her personal site as well as the site of the BYP Network.