In this pitch, Margaret Spence highlights the stark under‑representation of women—especially African American women—in corporate leadership, noting that women hold less than 1% of CEO positions in the United States. Drawing on her experience managing $195 million in corporate losses and observing the lack of women who look like her on boards, she explains the origins of the Employee to CEO Project. The initiative is a mentorship and champion community designed to empower highly educated women of color, providing them with sponsors, mentors, and strategic guidance to navigate the corporate ladder. Spence shares her personal decision to leave corporate America after 18 years, rejecting the promise of eventual promotion, and frames the project as both a personal empowerment effort and a corporate social responsibility imperative. She calls on corporations to recognize the unsustainable 1% leadership figure and to support the tri‑fold goal of building women leaders, pressuring companies to change exclusionary practices, and ultimately increasing the representation of women of color in CEO roles.
Chapters
We manage about $195 million in losses for those corporations. And I present every month or every week to those corporate CEOs. One of the things that I saw is that there are very few women that look like me in the corporate board. There are very few women at the leadership helm of any of these corporations. Out of that came the story of the Employee to CEO Project. Women currently occupy less than 1% of the CEO roles in corporate America. Does that mean that the other 99% of us are failing to lead? Or does that mean that there's a concrete ceiling between us and leadership? The Employee to CEO Project is a mentorship community meant to empower women of color, specifically African American women, who are the most educated women today. We hold the most degrees, We graduate with the most bachelor's, master's, and PhDs, yet we are not in the leadership pipeline. There's no one helping us develop our leadership skills. As an HR professional, the one thing that I know for sure is that it's not HR's job to develop your career. It's up to you to develop your own career. You have to decide that you want leadership, and if you want leadership, you have to be ready and prepared to not allow anything or anyone to stand in your way. Stand in your way. I left corporate America 18 years ago to start my corporation, and in doing so, I didn't buy into the fact of what my boss said to me, which is, Margaret, if you stay here long enough, you will inherit my job. Guess what, ladies and gentlemen, she's still in that position 18 years later. So I'm not here to let someone else control my destiny. The purpose of the Employee to CEO Project is simply this: We want to empower women to step into leadership. We want to change the mindset that we've been taught from babies that we can't lead. We want to provide you with mentors and sponsors and champions who are willing to help you get from point A to point B. We want to teach women how to play the chess game. The way we plan to do that is pretty simple. We're going to have a mentorship community. We're going to have a champion community. We're going to go out to corporate America and explain to them that the 1% is not corporate is not socially sustainable. If the demographics of your marketplace has a 55% of women and only 1% of them end up in your leadership— voting on your boards and leadership, that is a corporate social responsibility problem. So our goal is to do a tri-fold. Bring women to the fold so that we can help them and build them. And at the same time, say to corporate America, it's not acceptable for you to continue to prevent women, especially women that look like me, from being in the CEO role. And that is the purpose of the Employee to CEO Project. Thank you.
