Hey everyone. It's Kristina with the She's Brave Podcast. Have you guys ever noticed that, in general, it still seems to be the case that men have more confidence than women. Like for example, I just recently found out that both my husband and my father are engineers and they failed classes in college.
Had I failed a class in college or even gotten like a C, I would have thought, "Oh no, I can't get a degree in that". Today's guest is all about failure, overcoming success, empowering. She is truly a gem, a wonder, an amazing human being. Today we have Kimberly Bryant. She's the founder of Black Girls Code.
She has introduced women to tech and computer science, raising over 60 million dollars in funding and scaling to over a hundred thousand students locally, and 1 million girls virtually. She's listed as the 25 most influential African Americans in technology by business insider with over 158, 000 followers on LinkedIn.
Welcome. Welcome. Kimberly. Kimberly.
Thank you so much, Kristina. I'm happy to be here and speaking with you today.
I'm happy to be here and speaking with you today. I am gobsmacked by how much you have done and overcome in your life and what a ripple effect you have made in particular for young black women. It's shocking for me to know that only 14 percent of all engineers in today's world are female in the U. S. And. Even more shockingly, only 3 percent of women in technology are black women. That is correct? I had no idea and the whole world needs to know about you, your story, you helping get black girls into technology. I want to hear your story of failure in college and encouragement and community and women and how we give up more easily what we can do to raise each other up. So let's go back to your childhood. You were naturally good in math and science, right?
I'm the middle child, three kids. But I'm closest in age to my older brother. We're only two years apart. He was just like a superstar. I was more like a bookworm, more introverted, like reading books. And it was during late junior high school as well as high school years where I was really. Heavily into these accelerated programs in math and science, and then my guidance counselors were the ones who guided me along this pathway to considering engineering.
I didn't know anything about engineering. They were like, you should really explore engineering when you go to college. And I literally stumbled into the career field. Not knowing much about it other than it was heavily influenced in math and science and that's where it ended up.
A lot of people say it's the most difficult undergraduate degree that you can get, bar none. Most people fail at least one class and have to retake it in engineering. Tell us that story of you had an exam and you failed it. When we were talking before we started, you really made me think about my experience in college and how difficult it was being preparation for some of the trials and tribulations I've even had later in life as a leader, as a founder.
I got to college and coming on a full scholarship. I, came from I want to say a rigorous and challenging academic, high school, but when I came into college, was a high performer at Vanderbilt University and it was different. I wasn't at the top elite 1 percent anymore. Yes. It was the first time in my life, literally. When I failed a class, I had to learn how to learn. I found that I couldn't even do that by myself. I could be a bookworm studying on my own in high school. That doesn't work in college when you're studying engineering.
I literally almost dropped out. I don't know if I almost dropped out or thought I was gonna get kicked out. I probably had a 1. 9, 1. 7. Okay, thank you for sharing this because I think we all need to hear stories like this. Oh yeah, I had 1. So like I literally had to go back. I had this, very prestigious junior achievement scholarship. I had to beg please give me a check, I persisted, I stayed. Did like my first summer session, it took me a while, but I was slowly starting to change course and move back up.
Got to the point where I was actually on the Dean's list around, I want to say latter part of sophomore year, junior year. I was making the 4. 0s in a semester, was still below a 3. 0 because of that first freshman year being so low. I was doing well in this class all through the summer. Had a great TA who was the professor. Just thinking I was killing it. Final exam came in, took the test, to my surprise, oh no, I didn't get an A, I actually failed. I was devastated because I had been through this whole session at the top of the class. I couldn't understand, like, how I felt this final exam. My whole confidence went, it plummeted in that one moment in getting back that exam.
And I share this in some of the talks that I've done in the past that the that I had, and I've been thinking about him a lot lately, because he made such a pivotal impact on my life he came to me next day and told me failing mark in the class was not representative of my capability and my capacity and my talent, can I just quote you? Because the way you said it in your Ted talk five years ago was incredible. You, his name was Ollie and he said, this is one failure. It's not an indication of your potential. It does not define you. You are one of my best students. Yes. Just makes me want to cry. Yes. It's just so beautiful.
I definitely share this in that TED talk, like the last three years of my journey as a founder have been so challenging. I was just going through the storm to a certain extent, and that when you're going through the storm and navigating the storms of life, it absolutely shakes your confidence. And now that I'm on the other side and back into this mode of building again, that resonates with me so deeply. That's probably why he has really been on my mind, because it was as true then as it is now that one failure or a failures, they don't define your capability and ability. You still have the same talent. You're still you. And I think that negativity has to be. Push the side and find somewhere deep that piece of who you are, because that is still there. And that's what allows you to get up and continue to move, to continue to build and to continue to thrive. Yep. I have to quote you a little bit more in your Ted talk you said our focus on failure is important. The history of all achievement is riddled with failures. both large and small. Failure is a very important feature in our toolkit. Failure creates character. Failure allows us more creativity. Failure gives us permission to try again. Failure opens up doors to greater opportunities. We miss one thing when we talk about failure, though. We risk the failure that failures are not equitably distributed.
So I did want to touch on this a little bit. Again, I learned so much from you in studying you. I never thought about the fact that if you have a lot of privilege in your life and you fail, it's a lot easier to get back up. And if you don't have any resources, it's a lot harder to get back up again.
For sure. And I think about this a lot through the lens of being a woman and a woman, a female founder. I think that we are held to a higher standard often in terms of how we perform either in the workplace when we're building our businesses, and we get so such a small fraction of the resources to begin with, and then we're held to a higher standard and how we execute with those resources.
But if we fail, It's almost, I don't want to even say it's almost impossible. I think the odds are stacked against us and being able to get a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth chance. Not that we need all of those chances, but we do need a chance to move forward in whatever way we feel because, whatever may gave us that spark to create in the beginning, that doesn't go away.
Like you, we lit a match and just because there was a extinguish of that flame, doesn't mean that the talent is gone is still there. And so one of the things that I was expressing in that talk, and I do believe to be true is that as women. We deserve to have as many failures as it takes to order to follow our dreams and our goals and our passions.
And I feel that we should be able to get those second chances just as much as anyone else. One of the hundreds of things I admire about you is that you, when your daughter was 11, you lived in the Bay area and you were looking for some programs for her to learn. About computers and technology.
And it was really hard and challenging to find somewhere for her to fit in. Number one, it was almost all boys. Number two, even if there was a girl, like there was basically no African American girls. And so what you did is you saw a problem and you sought to fix it. And You have raised over 60 million in funding and have, you've educated, hundreds of thousands and millions virtually of, young black women to be.
You saw a problem and you said, let's try to fix it. I just want to acknowledge you for that. It's so incredible and it's so beautiful. In one of your Ted talks, your daughter gets up and speaks. So she's just so eloquent, just like you are. She's on the same path. What you started noticing was, yes, I can create all these programs for young black females and, get them through these education programs, but they also need support.
And your daughter briefly touched on it in the TED talk as well, that she needed to have the right environment, the right support. That's really where your focus has shifted to more. Lately I, I'm deeply curious, just off the cuff, like why, why do you think we women um, why are we so hard on ourselves?
Like here's me admitting, by taking an engineering course and failed, I just would have flunked out. Like I would have given up. Where do you think that comes from? I think, there's certainly been a lot of studies that have shown that, as girls, even we are really, I want to say, raised on this concept of perfection. There's some of it that self imposed restrictions that we can't fail. But part of that is also society's expectation that we will always. Maintain this perfection in how we move through life and how we execute, whether it's in school or work or career, whatever, and that doesn't serve us.
But we also have. Absorb that into our DNA as well. So part of it is a relearning that we have to do for ourselves so that we can give ourselves permission to fail. Now, that being the case, we also need spaces that are safe for us to fail within and by the safety net. Yes. Oh, this is what I heard you say, and I was like, I have never heard this and it's so beautiful.
It is it's necessary. There's a community that I'm in called Hatch. Like hatching an egg. And I have over the last two years done a few retreats with them. And it, this community brings together all of these different innovators. They could be social innovators, climate, filmmakers, whatever.
We're all doing different things. Food justice, all kinds of different things that these folks do. And in one of the exercises at one of the retreats. I guess we were trying to understand like where we saw ourselves in our journeys. And I remember saying something about as leaders, we should give others more grace. Blah, blah, blah. And one of the other facilitators told me like what about giving grace to yourself? And it shook me in the moment because I was so accustomed to thinking outside of myself. Like I want to be able to, as a leader, I'm going to give grace to this person, that person, but holding myself to a standard that I couldn't even give myself grace if I failed or made a mistake.
And it shook me that And that moment to recognize that yeah, like I also need to be able to demonstrate giving myself grace before I could even give it effectively to others. And so I think of that in the same concept around, having the spaces like that space was for me, which was. Safe to be vulnerable space.
That was safe where I felt welcome and not where I felt reaffirmed it, not because of, I did X, Y, and Z because nobody, most of the people in that room didn't know what I did for a living. It didn't matter. I could just show up just as me, Kimberly. And feel receive, welcome, and protect it. We need more spaces such as that to lean into our vulnerability, which allows us to grow, allows us to learn, and it allows us to keep evolving. I want that for more women and more girls to have those types of communities. Girls, we need to start it for girls. It was so beautiful hearing your daughter in the TED talk saying that one of the key.
reason why she's at where she's at in technology is that she was provided a safe place to fail. Yeah. I'll give you another example. When my daughter Kai was so she was already in college by 2019 when we did that TED Talk.
But when she graduated in 2018, she had a really difficult senior year. By the time she graduated, she was exhausted. She was like, I think I just want to do a gap year, take a year off. And so I was like, okay, you do a gap year, come work with me at BGC.
And she did. So she actually came to work every day as a program coordinator. That's so cool. And here's the thing that happened within that year. She didn't report directly to me. She reported to another director on the team and other program managers on the team. And they nurtured this little girl, like she's a young lady now, but they nurtured this little girl over those 12 months. when she did go to college, the whole team, literally. Came with me to Baltimore to move her into this dorm room and help her put her old things out. And we went to dinner and they all gave her these little gifts and affirmations in this space
and it brought me to tears because I saw that, I was teaching my daughter as well as I could in my home, but there's some things she couldn't necessarily get from me. And here she was within this community coming in as, like a shy not very confident high school graduate, had this terrible year and this community molded her into this confident, fully self actualized young woman that you saw in 2019 on that stage. I can't take credit for all of that. It was transformative for her. It was clear, this was a prime example of what I mean about creating safe spaces for vulnerability, for growth, for transformation.
I saw it right in my own company with my own child by the team that welcomed her and created this space for her. That's so incredible. It's. Wow. I just want to say, when we feel safe as young women I think I'm quoting you here again how do we give those little brilliant black girls the freedom to experience all the creative opportunity that failure provides? What are we doing? Give us some ideas. I think having one of the things I would say is. Having a change of mindset, not a deficit based mindset, but an asset based mindset. Because we all come into whatever we're trying to learn with skills and talents before we even open a book.
We have it. You already have it. When I came to college, it wasn't that I didn't know things. I didn't have talent. I didn't have skills. I needed to learn how to learn. I need to learn how to learn engineering. There's nothing wrong with me because I didn't know how to. Create these matrices.
I had to learn that. Part of it is like a shift in how we engage with young women or anyone who's on a learning path around. Yep. Yep. And that was model. That's what I wanted to talk about next is most of my listeners are females, 30 and above on a self development journey. And I, in, studying you, learning more about you, and now having this amazing opportunity to connect with you, I have come to realize that this whole thing we have to nurture.
We need to be surround ourselves with people that we can fail and feel safe with. And I just had an incident of it. I'm teaching my second podcasting class and my students are primarily female. There was a big identity crisis this morning because we're in week seven and they want to be. At this point, they're not there yet. A lot of them are having, you know, they needed permission to fail. I had to spend a lot of time on that today with them and saying, it's okay. It's okay. This is a safe space to fail. We even have a private group that, we can, you can practice in.
And I just, I love what you, I'm going to quote you again. Cause it's just so awesome. I challenge my tribe to give me a safe space to fail a soft place to land.
Is that it? Yeah, go ahead. I think that's one thing I was thinking. I was looking at your Instagram and I saw a post you made. You were saying, if you have family or friends that, you share things with, and it's oh yeah, that's okay.
That's great. Whatever. They don't really give you that. They're not very enthusiastic about your treatments. They're not enthusiastic. Don't worry about it because they're not in this thing with you. They're never going to give you that validation. And I was like, you're right.
They're And I often tell other founders, young women that I'm coaching the same thing because like they go through these challenges where folks are not giving them the support or the validation that they're looking for. But sometimes we have to give it to ourselves. When no one is there in the quiet moments, how do you find it for yourself?
Is it in a spiritual practice? Is it in a meditative practice? Is it in nature? Whatever it is. I think we have to find that. Then I also think, I always say go to where the light is. Like we can stay over here in this dark, with the folks that are not giving you that validation and support, but why can't you make a different decision?
Go towards the light, go to those that are going to be supportive of you. And I think that is important because we often dwell where all the naysayers are. But I'm like no. Go over here, go towards the light, wherever you can find it, find the light and go. That's the direction that you go in.
And that's how you sustain. And you find your tribe, you find the people who are going to support you through your failures. Kimberly, you're nothing short of amazing. You literally are changing the world. One little female and in particular black females at a time. I just adore you. I'm so deeply honored that you came on today.
Before we launch into telling my listeners how they can connect with you, do you have any last words of advice that you would like to share with my listeners? As women, we often don't give ourselves enough credit for how much we carry on our shoulders.
And something someone asked me in another interview today is, stay with me. And she was like what do you want for yourself now? What do you want for yourself in the future? And what do you want to leave behind as a legacy? And the two things that I shared about now, like I want joy, I want to do the things that make me happy, that bring me joy, that bring me energy, that bring a smile to my face and figuring out what that is, I think is important, especially for us as women.
And then I said, you know what I want in the future, I want rest. Because we deserve that, we carry so much as women and mothers and grandmothers, but just finding a space for that soft landing. So that is the safe space for ourselves. And I think we deserve it. Figure out those two things.
What do we want for ourselves now? What do we want for ourselves in the future? And what do we want to leave behind? And that's how you plan what you do in life. And you have certainly created an incredible legacy already. Thank you. Already. And there's, I cannot wait to just see your continued development.
And as you continue, I know you do venture capitalism. I know that you're again, like working on with kind of emotionally supporting women, like not just the technical part of, young women and education, again, this confidence factor, this failure factor, all of it. So please let us know how we can connect with you.
Definitely. I am very active on most social media, so they could definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn and at Kimberly Bryant, you can also find me on I do one on one coaching. That's on intro. com and also just follow me on blackinnovationlab. org. It's my website or six, the number six gyms on most social media platforms, you can find me there.
Beautiful. And you guys just Google her, Kimberly Bryant, and she's got all these amazing Ted talks. So super inspiring. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time, Kimberly. I think that this conversation was so eyeopening for me and there were things that I didn't I had blind spots about, and I really appreciate you sharing your light and your wisdom and all your efforts and the beautiful changes you've made in the world for young women.
Thank you, Kristina. Thank you for having me and thank you for using this platform. I appreciate you too.
Hey, Brave friends. Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy life to listen to today's episode. I love learning about what makes you brave. I'm here with you. I see you, I hear you, and I want to hear from you. I want to know how you are showing up as brave and resilient and authentic.
Connect with me on Instagram at She'sBravePodcast, or check out my website at www. she'sbravepodcast.com. If you're interested in learning more about podcasting, join my Facebook group, www. facebook.com/groups/podcastmasteryjourney. I'm sending you guys so much love until next time, keep being brave.
