Ten years ago, Working Mother took a chance: Could we create an initiative based on the advancement of multicultural women? Only three companies made the list that year; now we’re at 25.

I’ve had an amazing view of where race and gender meet in corporate America. From the podium of our national multicultural women’s conferences and town halls over the past 10 years, I’ve seen women cry tears of anger and frustration when they tried to explain why they can’t trust women from another racial group. I’ve watched others excitedly claim their identity for the first time as women of mixed-race background. I’ve also heard the loneliness of women completely isolated by race in their workplace. I have been privileged to be a white woman creating an initiative to advance women of color in America.

Sacred Circles
At each year’s conference and at every town hall, we break out into separate racial/ethnic groups called Same Race Circles: African American, Asian and South Asian, Mixed Race, Latina, Native American, Caucasian. This gives each group the chance to talk privately about the designated topic of the year: trust, identity, authenticity, influence, power. Each group talks about the barriers they face, the obstacles they create themselves and their ideas of what will move their group forward. After nearly two hours of this deep discussion, each group reports back to the full audience of 700 women—but reports back only what they choose to share.

The rule of the conference is that you can only attend your own Same Race Circle, so I have been to 10 years of white women’s circles. I’ve heard white women say, privately, that they do not see color; that they are always “nice” to women of color; that they feel united with women of color in the struggle to gain equal rights from men. White women from Texas to DC, from Los Angeles to New York, have opened their report back to the general session by saying, “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells.” And they don’t just mean at the podium.

What white women hear back from the other groups, however, is that as we pushed our way up the ladder of success into the all-male hierarchy, we did not reach out and bring many women of color up with us. We were so busy feeling left out and pushed back by the male power structure that we didn’t see that women of color felt the same way about us as we felt about the men. Sure, some men were helping us and mentoring us, but every day we felt ignored by and divided from men in power. It was a painful lesson to hear that women of color felt the same way about us. But it also served to move us forward.

“Trust” was the most difficult as well as the most compelling topic we ever took on. We were able to ask thousands of women through instant polling right then and there at our event about whom they do and do not trust. Jaws dropped as we saw that African American women trusted white women only half as much as they trusted every other group. We took these statistics all around the country and urged women of all races to talk about trust—or the lack of trust—between racial groups. One thing we learned: Talking about trust was the first step in building trust.

The Asian women often said that they admired the boldness of the African American women and the way they always seemed to support each other even if they were just first meeting. Inspired by this, Asian women launched their own professional support group, the Asian Women’s Leadership Network, right there at our dinner! That is a point of pride for us.

The Latinas told of the difficulties of breaking from family tradition to go to college, of language barriers and feeling held back because of their style and dress. They, too, formed a support group, the Madrinas, and I was honored to be named the godmother of the Madrinas (which means godmothers).

One of our groups always stands out as the smallest: Native American women. Some years we only had two Native American women attend. They met in their Same race circle and reported out together at the podium. They talked about their sacred traditions, about growing up on a reservation, about feeling
completely isolated in the workplace. Their stories are powerful, and we listened in silence as we realized that none of us from any other race had considered what it might be like to be a Native American woman in our companies.

Who Are We?
At our very first town hall, a woman came up to me and said, “Carol, I don’t belong in any of these groups. I am of mixed race.” From then on we invited anyone who was of mixed race to join the mixed-race group if she’d like to. Many women of mixed race did not go to this group because they had spent a lifetime identifying as one race or another of their mix. But for some it was a liberating, exhilarating choice to make. One year all 20 women in the group came up to the stage together to report back and said, “Look at us. we are of mixed race.” They looked Irish, black, Indian, Mexican, Chinese—some looked distinctly of one race and others an unidentifiable never forget.

The African American women were always the largest group, making up about 40 percent of the attendees. It was nearly impossible to get them out of their sacred circle each year, as they had so much they wanted to dig into in this rare opportunity to talk about something that was always on their minds but rarely acknowledged—the part that their race played in their careers. When a feisty woman on our leadership panel said she thought of herself as a pushy New Yorker, not a Chinese American woman, the African American panelist responded, “My color walks into the room with me, and I cannot do anything about that.” This public conversation about the difference between being a Chinese woman in corporate America and an African American woman in corporate America broke open the doors to Best Companies for Multicultural Women raw honesty, and the initiative has been steeped in that ever since.

A Decade of Dialogue
On this tenth anniversary I want to thank all the thousands of women who have contributed their stories, who have shared their voices, who have worked hard to grow and learn. White, black, Asian, Latina, native and, yes, mixed race: We women of all races have spoken out; we have danced, laughed, cried, shouted, hugged, talked and built something powerful. We’ve built a dialogue that’s ongoing, that doesn’t stop, that influences women all over the country, that makes people comfortable talking about race and gender, that shifts the culture of our companies, that joins with other dialogues and other voices and stories to impact the culture of our country. We’ve built some very valuable trust. It’s been a glorious 10 years!