Chris Motley wasn’t set up to succeed. Born to an eighth grader on Chicago’s south side, the African-American boy was bright but given few advantages by society. Until, that is, a family friend mentioned to his mother the nonprofit A Better Chance, which aims to help gifted children of color get great educations. That was the break that led to opportunity. Before long, the teenaged Motley—a star student—found himself telling his story to donors at a Manhattan dinner at Cipriani that was presided over by 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley.

“This guy approached me and said, ‘My boss and I are really interested in you working at our company,’” Motley recalls. “I said, ‘Well, what is your company?’” It was no less than Goldman Sachs. What followed was a series of big successes: a degree from Columbia, an MBA from Northwestern, and successful runs as a commodities trader and international businessman. But Motley’s latest venture may be his most challenging and rewarding: Giving other young people their own better chances.

In 2020 Motley launched a virtual mentorship platform, Mentor Spaces. Its aim: To give those traditionally shut out of top employment opportunities a way in, via meaningful conversations that build confidence and social capital. The startup also hopes thereby to help companies deliver on DEI promises. Corporations and universities are responding. UBS and T-Mobile as well as Howard University and Spelman College are among its founding members, and Motley estimates the average ROI for participating businesses is $1.5 million annually. The platform’s community includes young graduates as well as executives, HR professionals, and college administrators. Mentors and mentees are matched by interest, and interact via group sessions, one on one conversations, and threads where members are able to ask questions, advise each other and ultimately hire or get hired. A sample question company executives might receive: “What impresses you the most when you are hiring for your team?”

It’s not hard to see why Mentor Spaces appealed to SAP, whose sustainability mission includes achieving zero inequality in the workplace. It practices a “no boundaries” policy with its accelerator program SAP.iO. According to Kange Kaneene, vice president for SAP.iO Foundries in North and Latin America and the Caribbean, “that means we prioritize companies founded or led by people whose share of venture capital funding in the technology industry is proportionally less than their share of the population.” The accelerator offered Motley a spot in an SAP.iO cohort called “Future of Work,” in San Francisco.

For Motley, the program was valuable not only for the months-long, ahem, mentorship opportunity, but because it’s designed to create a longer-term partnership between SAP and Mentor Spaces. Kaneene explains: “We’re building an ecosystem of startups that extend the value of our solutions to drive sustainable impact.” How that looks in practice: Upon completion of the accelerator, each startup is integrated into an  SAP solution best suited to it, so SAP clients can gain seamless access to the startup’s products or services. The Foundry experience wasn’t always easy, Motley says. “We do what they call Dolphin Tank, which is the nice version of Shark Tank. You have three minutes to pitch to huge SAP clients like PepsiCo, and everyone gives you feedback on what could have been improved. Ours was, ‘It’s great to know what you do. But what would be better is if you gave us a case study. Your whole pitch should be in the form of showing us what you did for a customer.” Today, he says, “That was tremendous feedback. Because our ratio of show versus tell was inverted, and now it’s not.”

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Landit is part of a profile series featuring startups participating in the Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo, that took place June 28-30 in San Francisco. several companies on the Cloud Wars Expo Innovation Path have developed software to automate and improve employee recruitment and retention. Landit has a system that’s unique for the level of focus it has taken: It’s designed to increase engagement, retention, and mobility for women and diverse talent populations.

According to Lisa Skeete Tatum, the company’s founder and CEO, these groups are underrepresented when it comes to career growth opportunities — specifically, access to those opportunities and the people who can make them available.

“So many organizations are focused on intake but equally, if not more, important is what happens once people get in the door,” Skeete Tatum says. “Do they stay? Thrive? Progress?”

Landit’s objective is to “democratize and drive performance and career success so that work is working for everyone,” she adds.

The company develops SaaS software and offers personalized career coaching services. It offers both to corporate customers and individuals.

Landit is part of the sap.io startup accelerator program. It has $19 million in venture capital funding and was launched in 2015. Landit is headquartered in New York; the company does not disclose its number of employees.

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Dr Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-Founder of Gapsquare, part of XpertHR, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list for services to tackling global workplace inequalities and promoting fairness and inclusion.

Zara’s commitment to ensuring diversity and inclusion began in her native Moldova. It was here that she worked to bring an end to exploitative people trafficking rings which forced women into sweatshops. It’s with this same determination that Zara has sought to bring equality to the workplace by founding Gapsquare in 2016; harnessing data and AI technology to help organisations put a stop to biases and prejudicial practices preventing equality.

Gapsquare provides business leaders with actionable insights about their company’s existing pay gaps through their flagship software FairPay® Pro. The organisation has helped over 80 organisations across the UK create fairer workplaces, including working with Wieden + Kennedy, Condé Nast and Accenture.

Zara is taking Gapsquare’s mission to end pay inequality global, working with business leaders to get pay equity on the agenda and implementing the pay technology in the United States.

A leading voice in the campaign for positive change and action, Zara is Chair of the Women in Business Task Group and a member of the Global Future Council on Equity and Social Justice at the World Economic Forum. She has also been recently appointed to the Shinkwin Commission focusing on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-founder at Gapsquare, from XpertHR, comments: “From my work in Moldova to using technology to tackle inequality with Gapsquare, I have been focused on creating a better world of work, one that has fairness at its core and is not held back by patriarchal structures. It is an honour to have this work recognised and I am incredibly grateful for the nomination. It’s heartening to see this work, and the values it represents, placed firmly on the national agenda.

“But our work is by no means complete, the impact of the pandemic means that the time it will take to close the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. That is why I am focused on change at a global level, bringing Gapsquare to the US, and continuing to work with our leaders in the UK to deliver meaningful change for a fairer and more inclusive future of work.

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Leader Development Platform Named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution by Lighthouse Research & Advisory

Sounding Board, Inc., the first Leader Development Platform designed to bridge the leadership gap,shared that it has been named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution for Talent Development by the Lighthouse Research & Advisory HR Tech Awards.

The annual program seeks to help buyers and employers learn about the best companies in the industry for technology selection purposes. An independent judging panel reviewed each submission and selected winners in six categories: Core HR/Workforce, Employee Experience, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Talent Management and Total Rewards and Employee Wellbeing.

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Mathison, a NYC-based provider of an end-to-end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring and retention platform, closed its $25m Series A funding.

The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, SemperVirens, ANIMO Ventures, GTM Fund, Gaingels and JP Morgan.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to build out its data and analytics capabilities, scale its go-to-market team and increase its collective impact with employers. As part of the round, John Lin of F-Prime Capital joined the board.

Led by Dave Walsh, CEO, and Arthur Woods, Mathison provides a DEI Operating System to give employers a single place to manage their:

• DEI measurement, benchmarking and reporting
• Diversity sourcing to expand the hiring pipeline
• DEI training and tools to shift behavior and reduce bias

Designed to integrate into employers’ existing systems, the platform features DEI tools that can be implemented into every employee’s daily workflow and a comprehensive dashboard of DEI metrics for leaders.The solution has made a measurable collective impact, sourcing over 50,000 underrepresented candidates for employers, supporting the development of hundreds of new equitable talent policies across over 30 industries, and engaging more than 10,000 employees in DEI training to date.

Mathison works with a wide range of employers of all sizes including companies like Sonos, TripAdvisor, 23andMe, HelloFresh, Bowery Farms, Bristol Myers Squibb and non-profits from Sundance Film to The World Economic Forum.

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SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco graduate Paradox knows a thing or two about navigating the big, blue, bureaucratic ship that is SAP. From the get-go, Paradox considered SAP a strategic partner and came ready to commit to the path early on. From being the only digital recruiting assistant on SAP Store to use AI/ML to becoming an endorsed app in 2021(and a unicorn at that!), Paradox’s grit and mindset have helped them get a handle on the ins and outs of partnering with SAP, despite the various challenges. We sat down with Sylvia Miller, Paradox’s SVP of Alliances and Partnerships to discuss the mindset needed to optimize SAP as a channel partner.

On your mark, get set, learn!

One of the ways to make the most of your partnership with SAP? Come with a “ready-to-learn” attitude; consider yourself a student in the front row of SAP University! Sylvia emphasized the importance of asking questions, and being in a constant learning mode.

Some questions you should work to answer as an SAP Partner:

• How does the SAP ecosystem function overall?
• What are the general expectations of such a large enterprise? (from security and compliance to deadlines).
• Who are the key stakeholders that I must align with, and how do I reach them?
• What are the biggest needs and challenges of our mutual clients?
• What tangible tips and nuggets can SAP.iO’s curated mentorship provide to me?
• How can our startup organization and solution leverage SAP’s technology and open integration platform?

If you can’t answer these questions throughout your partnership journey, you will likely have a lot of difficulty in navigating a fruitful path forward. Once you do have the answers, there will be plethora of action items and follow ups for you to get to work on.

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