Daversa Partners | Connecting Tech with the Next Generation of Black Executives

Hi everyone. Welcome to Grey Matter, the podcast from Greylock, where we share stories from company builders and business leaders. I'm Heather Mack, head of editorial at Greylock. Today we're excited to talk with Michelle Kamendal and Clinton Browning of Diversa Partners, which is a premier executive search firm serving the technology industry. The firm has just launched an entirely new business unit called Dreamscape, which is dedicated to ensuring there is black leadership on the boards and executive teams of the most important companies and investing firms in technology. Clinton recently joined Aversa to run Dreamscape. Dreamscape has been a work in progress for the past year and is launching today with more than 3,000 connections in its network. Early partners include tech companies like Brex, Robinhood and Applovin, as well as venture capital firms like Greylock. Also joining us today is Holly Rose Faith, who leads executive and board level talent recruiting at Greylock and who works closely with the Dreamscape team. To our listeners, you can read a transcript of this episode on our website greylock.com blog and you can find all Grey Matter episodes by signing up subscribing on SoundCloud, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's welcome our guests, Clinton, Michelle and Holly Rose. Welcome to Gray Matter. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Great to be here.

Thank you for having us.

Let's get right into things. Let's start with a little background on Diversa. Michelle, you've been there since 2015. Tell me about the firm.

So we are a specialty firm that builds management teams for tech startups and late stage private companies. So our model is to work horizontally at the C suite. So we have specialists in every functional role across your executive team, both for B2B and for consumer. Our focus is building full teams for private venture backed companies. Through this work, we've done a lot of team building work within Greylock's portfolio over the years which when we started this new division, Dreamscape kind of made it a natural evolution to approach Holly Rose about a potential partnership with her and the Greylock team.

And so what is Dreamscape?

So Dreamscape is an entirely new division, entirely focused on creating more opportunities for black representation in tech. At its core, Dreamscape is a business unit, the diversalaunch, that is dedicated to ensuring that there is black leadership represented on the boards and on the executive teams of some of the most important companies and investment firms in technology that are being built right now. We started this division in 2020 and essentially we spent the first nine months entirely focused on building network building relationships. So the Firm had always had strong relationships in the black executive community, but we wanted to take a beat to expand our aperture and also identify talent outside of our network and work on uncovering who's the next generation of black leaders. People who are rising through the director ranks and in the next few years will be ready to step into VP and C level roles. So we spent the better part of 2020 really just doing this work. We did not talk about this externally. We did not actively seek out client engagements, but we did invest a ton of time and a ton of resources into making sure that we really had a solid network as the foundation of the project. And then come late 2020, early 2021, we started to actively look for clients and partners who were aligned with our mission that could help us actually put the work into motion by creating connections and opportunities for these black executives in our network. So when we were thinking about how to partner externally, we decided on two avenues just to start. The first being direct partnerships with clients to add black representation to their boards. The second being partnerships with venture firms to help them close their network gap. And then in terms of where we're at in our life cycle, we've kind of got our early proof of concept. At this point, we've proven we can do it. And as we look at the next chapter, it's really about scaling this impact, which is why we recruited Clint to join us.

Well, that's your cue. Tell us about your new role, and I'd love to hear also, like, a little bit more about your background or how you worked up to this.

Right. Thank you. So my background started almost 25 years ago. I was fortunate to be at Korn Ferry as they were creating and launching their first ever diversity practice. And so I played a role in helping to drive that initiative on a global scale. What that really led to was a professional life of being very focused on and around diversity in executives. And most importantly for me was that the outcome, not just the search, not just the slate, but that the outcome, the winning candidate, would be a diverse candidate. And so that kind of calling card became part of what I did in reference to the role. Diversa is an organization that has been known for going above and beyond, kind of stepping out into areas that others have not. And so this opportunity felt like the right opportunity at the right time with the right kind of organization. Who was really saying, how do we go about actually making an impact? Not just talking about it, but really executing on what so many others are simply talking about? That's really kind of where I've come from and what led me to be attracted to the Dreamscape opportunity?

When we were in this network building mode last year, we realized that all too often when we have these introductory conversations with executives, when we'd asked them, do you have relationships with partners or talent partners in the venture community? Nine times out of ten, the answer was no. So what we wanted to do was figure out a way that we could build a bridge between the black talent in the industry and the venture communities as they build their portfolio companies, whether it be for a role that's open right now or a role that's open three months from now. We had conversations with 10 to 15 of the top venture firms, and I think Greylock was wildly enthusiastic about coming on board.

And why did you land on this model as a means to expand representation and leadership positions? How does the tech and VC ecosystem tie into everything?

Well, I mean, in today's world, I think venture firms play a huge role in building teams and surfacing talent for their portfolio companies. If I'm a founder, I turn to my investors first when I'm thinking about making an executive level or board level higher because they have incredibly powerful networks. But they. They don't always have incredibly diverse networks. And I think more so now than ever before. There truly is this demand and this will and this want to change. So I think there's a whole spectrum of clients and venture firms out there who are at 100% on the readiness scale when it comes to figuring out it's time to figure out how to do it. So we wanted to capitalize on that.

And if I may, the backdrop to that really is. So if you want to see more black leadership at scale in companies being built in the venture ecosystem, there needs to be a bridge between the talent and the venture community so that they're in the room on these opportunities. We feel as though that's really the missing link in many ways.

Let's talk a little bit more about the venture side. Like Holly Rose, you lead executive talent recruiting for Greylock, and expanding representation has been a huge area of focus of your work. And working with Diversa and Dreamscape is a great example of the ways that firms are taking a much more active approach. And so how does a firm go about figuring out how to get involved with organizations like Dversa and how does it help you do your job?

So the first question, Heather, in terms of the assessment of the program, myself and the Dreamscape team had a very open and honest conversation around why this is important to each party. Involved and to make sure we, we were aligned. What I really respected in my dialogue with the Dreamscape team is that it wasn't just the focus on how they can work with Greylock, but Dreamscape evaluated us to make sure we would be good partners to them and the executives that they have relationships with just beyond some of their more recent relationships. They have years and years of relationships with executives and hold those really valuable, valuable to their firm. Neither of us viewed this as a transactional partnership and very much wanted to be on the same page for how we wanted to help change the startup ecosystem to have more executive teams and boards with black representation. So if there was a firm out there thinking, hey, the Dreamscape team would be a great partner to us, to what Michelle said earlier, to really kind of hold the mirror up to yourselves and to make sure this is something you're really committed to. To the second part of the question for the executive talent function at Greylock, Diversity is talked about in every search, and we recognize we can have an impact in helping to close the network gap. We are believers that change comes from more than one person, company or firm. And having an external thought partner has been incredibly valuable in getting to know black executives that otherwise weren't on our radar. In addition to that, our partnership has given us the opportunity to have really raw and honest discussions of how our industry needs to do better, but also a deeper understanding of the point of view of the executive. And so that's been incredibly valuable to both myself, my team, and just the broader Greylock firm as a whole.

What is the process and approach like for searching for a board member and then thinking about when you're working proactively with an organization like Diversa, what does that look like?

You know, I think sometimes there's this misconception that it's, you know, about checking a box because of some of the requirements that are starting to happen. But it's much bigger and broader than that. And I'd say that's one of the first places that we start is helping our companies understand the value that exists in having diverse representation on the board. I'll turn it over to Michelle and Clinton because I know they too approaches pretty directly with founder CEOs when they're doing searches as well, because they'll be working hand in hand with them too.

In general, like tech as a whole needs support in learning how to do exactly that. How do we run an inclusive process? So the Dreamscape approach to how we go about a board search is a lot more consultative than a Traditional search, there's a lot more education and enablement and bringing people along for the journey. But our major framework is actually pretty simple. It centers around what we call the two eyes. The first being inclusivity. So being inclusive about where you're sourcing candidates, the way that you scope the profile, that makes a huge difference in who you are actually able to recruit for the role. And then the second is intentionality. Right? Being intentional about making black representation a centerpiece of the process. Because these outcomes don't happen by accident. Right. You need to curate your entire process to ensure that you're going to get the outcome that you want.

If I could just piggyback there, I think the next question that comes up is, you know, why black only? And even when I first heard about Dreamscape, I said to myself, can you really do this if you only focus on black representation? And what I've come to understand is really two things. Diversa has a history of being brutally intentional. We pick a problem, we apply all of our resources and, and we guarantee an outcome candidly. That's how we do search. The second thing is in the context of diversity, black executives are the most underrepresented in boardrooms and leadership teams. We wanted to take it head on, and we decided that now was the time. Some might say we're crazy for being this narrowly focused on black representation. Candidly, not every potential partner we've spoken to was willing to jump into this with us, but those aren't the right partners for us. And others have even called us gluttons for punishment. But we feel like if we're going to take something like this on, it may as well be something that no other firm would sign up to do. We want to be the game changer.

Brutally intentional. I love that. That's great. Can you walk us through any examples? What does this look like in practice?

On the board front, we are really proud to finally be able to talk about some of the work that's been happening behind the scenes. We've had kind of a cascade of announcements over the last couple of weeks, but we just announced to Sunda Duckett Brown, CEO of tiaa, to the board of Brex. Dara Tresader, the SVP of marketing at Peloton, is joining the board of Robinhood. And then this will be publicly announced later today. But we've also just placed the chief legal officer at Gusto, a woman by the name of Elisa Harvey Dawson, to the board of Applovin. So the board work was really the short term play. How do we make an impact? Right now our longer term play is really the second avenue when it comes to venture partnerships. Obviously Robinhood's mission is how do we democratize finance for underserved, underbanked populations. So it was super important to them that as they were thinking about building their board, that there being more representation to reflect that mission. So when we kicked off the search, we scoped the role really inclusively to make sure that we could find their perfect board director. Like traditional board profiles are pretty limiting. Like historically, only sitting or retired CEOs or CFOs are candidates that have access to these types of opportunities. And that is not traditionally a very diverse population. So if a company is really serious about bringing more diversity onto their boards, the profile of a board director has to expand. So in the case of Robinhood, we decided that brand and that marketing were super important. It was a perspective that they really wanted to have on their board and that became our avenue for engaging with Dreamscape candidates for the seat. So we went through a similar process with Applovin. They decided one of the areas where they could really use an additional voice on their board was legal compliance and data governance, just given the nature of their business. And that's how we ended up bringing on someone who's a chief legal officer to the board. One thing that's been really interesting over the last year is we've become really passionate about taking on clients where there are multiple open board seats when it's not just one seat. With the pressure of multiple diversity requirements like must be a person of color, must be a woman. It gives the search team the flexibility to be more thoughtful about how we can partner with you to design your board in a way that actually lifts up new board talent. Robinhood and Applovin are two super influential, important 30 billion plus market cap companies who deviated from the norm that we see other companies get stuck in. So most founders are trying to optimize for been there, done that in every role on their executive team and they look to their board as a safety net for that. If this person's done it before, then they are going to be my safety net that can help me get to the next level. But if some of the highest flying companies in the world like Robinhood can think differently about that, I think it sets a tone and a standard for the others that are up and coming at this time that they have permission to think differently about what they look for in their board directors.

That's great. How do we think about the next generation of board Directors, really intentionally.

I think if you solely look at macro population trends, yes, statistically there is a shortage of black leadership to fill these potential board roles. But that hasn't entirely been our experience with what's going on right now in tech. I think people at large have used the pipeline problem tagline and as more of an excuse for what's a lack of willingness to put in the work and to think more creatively about how to leverage the amazing black talent that is actually out there. So our approach right now is about how do we create the right networks, the right connections for executives, while elevating the next generation of black leaders.

Yeah, boardrooms 10 years from now will look very different than they do now, both in terms of diversity of color, of gender, but also in terms of background and functional expertise and archetype. But that next generation of board talent is being built right now. Board experience ultimately cannot be the prerequisite for a board role if we want to truly create this kind of change. So collectively, we need to create a system that fully engages and lifts up this next and new generation of directors. My hope, very selfishly, is that one day soon we're living in a world where venture firms are so diverse that we're building diverse boards from the start, where founders really think about this earlier in a company's life cycle and we have more directors willing to give up their seats to build more diverse boards, period.

Yeah, I think in general there's a lot of work to do. Right. Like even right now, every pre IPO company in tech is trying to add diversity to their boards, but for the most part, they've been built exclusively up to this point. So as they move towards being a public company, they want to add one seat to their board. They look around the room at who's currently on the board and they realize they need to hire a woman and it also needs to be a woman of color. There's this whole generation of amazing executives who happen to be black men who are not getting calls on the types of board opportunities that they deserve to because of this phenomena. So even as the industry takes huge steps towards inclusivity, there's still exclusivity here. And it's a direct result of how long this has been going on and how systemically boards have been built in a non diverse way.

The one build I would have from working with Dreamscape and just also my perspective from Greylock is over the last year there's been more education to portfolio companies and founders and boards around, looking at executives that just aren't in the tech ecosystem. I think there's been a historical mindset of, I guess you could call the tunnel vision of just thinking, well, who's an executive that knows tech and has been there and done that before? And there is more of a push and a concerted effort of helping people recognize that executives from kind of tangential industries are just as exceptional as executives that come from tech industries. And I'm seeing much more of a shift in that mentality which allows companies who have that mindset to tap into executives they otherwise wouldn't have crossed paths with.

Holly Rose, I think you're spot on. There is a huge component of this that is about education and I agree with you. We agree with you that we are seeing entities across the board who are becoming more receptive to opening the aperture and looking at profiles that, as you said, just two, three, five years ago would not have even been considered. And as we see more of those individuals find their way to board seats and begin to have positive impact with significant outcomes, I agree with you. I think that's part of what's going to help us move the needle throughout our collective industry. I mean, look, ultimately there is no shortage of work to be done. It's why we signed up to do it. This is why we selfishly are so grateful to partner with clients like Greylock and Holland Rose. Because we can't solve it alone. We're going to all have to band together and we're going to have to figure out how to be relentless in creating a more inclusive ecosystem in tech. And I think that under our 2i concept, it starts with inclusivity at the top and it includes being again, brutally intentional in each step and each decision that we make. Also, the greatest ideas and the greatest change that we see globally are often fostered at the venture level. We're not seeing the mammoth 100-year-old companies create game changing technologies and delivering game changing opportunities to industry. Our position is that if the companies we're doing business with already are the game changers of tomorrow, they've got a great opportunity to also be the game changers around diversity.

Awesome. Well everyone, thank you so much for joining me here today. It sounds like you're all doing just excellent work that's so needed right now and always. So thanks again for joining us today on Gray Matter.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you very much.

That concludes this episode of Gray Matter. If you liked what you hear, Please subscribe at SoundCloud, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to find all of our content. Check out our website at greylock. Com and follow us on Twitter at greylockvc. I'm Heather Mack, and thanks for listening.