Succeeding While Black
Professional Development is an essential part of your career growth when you graduate with your degree. Investing in yourself once you graduate with your degree is called professional development. Professional development comes in all forms, industry specific conferences, virtual trainings, or company lunch and learns. Once you graduate, you are on your own and in 6 months here comes Sallie Mae seeking her return on the investment in your education.
A few weeks ago I invested in myself and attended the 49th annual National Black MBA Conference in Houston, Texas. This conference brings Masters in Business and other advanced degrees from across the country and some of the best and brightest students who are in their 1st or 2nd year Masters of Business programs and anticipating graduating from their Masters of Business programs in the spring or fall.
The mission of the NBMBAA is to lead in the creation of educational, wealth building, and growth opportunities for those historically underrepresented throughout their careers as students, entrepreneurs and professionals. I became a member of my local MBA chapter in Phoenix AZ in 2011 when I was a 1st year MBA student, and graduated in 2012. Each city has a chapter you can be a member of, you can go to the nbmbaa.org website to find your local chapter 39 cities are represented.
Every year the National Conference is hosted in a chapter city and Houston was the host city for 2019, next year 2020 the host city is Washington D.C.
The National Black MBA conference has the biggest career fair with some of the major companies or brands like Proctor and Gamble, Coco-Cola, Google, and Microsoft. The career fair are seeking you men and women of color. Outside of the career fair there are professional development workshops with executives or subject matter experts.
Meet the Experts series are corporate executives from the company to discuss their business, product or service in depth and to give you tips and tools on development or work culture/environment.
For example, I attended the Meet the Experts- Sponsored by LinkedIn entitled,
“Build Your Professional Presence”
LinkedIn Executives present were
Nicole Wallace Ardiet-Marketing Solutions Executive
Juliana Jaoudi-Senior Director of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LaRon Johnshon-Head of LinkedIn Detroit
They discussed the do’s and don’ts of having LinkedIn profiles, the highlights to enhance your profile, what recruiters look for when they are scouting, and adding someone on LINKEDIN that is nearby that you can discover while being in the same networking event.
I wanted to highlight this professional development conference because succeeding while black in corporate America or entrepreneurship can be challenging, difficult and or lonely at times especially when you are the only one in the room. Attending this conference annually has helped me, and I hope that it will help you too, it definitely will give you the networking confidence, knowledge and boost you need to propel you forward.
Happy Professionally Developing!