Black Girls Market Gives Us a Seat at the Table

Black Girls Market is a collective designed for Black women in Marketing. AMEX Senior Manager of Digital Product and Strategy Lily Doxy founded BGM with Black women in mind to build community and create a network for Black women to thrive. Black Girls Market hosted their launch dinner party titled “The Connect” inside the Black-Owned, 24:ours Creative Space with an elegant display of gold vases, large feathers and stunning decor in true Black Girl Magic fashion.

We sat at a table of media mavens: content creators, Bloggers, and media professionals in areas of Public Relations, Advertising, Social Customer Engagement and of course, Marketing. Haitian cuisine was passed around the table family-style as the hum of small talk filled the room. Our lovely host Lily started our dialogue with a toast. Dressed in an impeccable Elyvyn Thirty ensemble, Lily offered a toast to ourselves, to an amazing budding network, and to the women to who will take the same path into marketing as we have. And with a clink of our glasses, we started to spill the tea.

Under select chair cushions were ice breaker questions to guide our open forum conversation about life in Marketing. Questions addressed personal milestones like bouncing back from a negative, and professional obstacles like practicing self-control to prevent a “blackback” (a clapback, but in Black). Its no secret that Black women in corporate spaces face microaggressions, white-splaining, white shade, and mansplaing. The benefits of our conversation were the incredible advice shared with each other to help us combat that. One of those solutions? Utilizing HR. CC (or BCC) your HR team to have those receipts just in case things hit the fan. Always protect your neck!

We covered the importance of being Black in the workplace and the day when we’ll be able to give our own the upper hand, the same way our counterparts do; but it comes with a catch. When we must work twice as hard to obtain half “they” do, we produce the skill of being damn near perfect at everything we do. You’ve got to come correct!

The Black Girls Market Connect Dinner Party was a glimpse into the result of when Black women gather. Words like “therapy, “wine down” and “church” were thrown around at the end of the night because we were finally around other women who just get it – and also get to the bag. Seeing similar faces like ours in the workspace can be a rarity, but BGM gave us an environment to be the majority – even if we must walk as the minority come 9a the following morning.