Career Conversations: What's Next for Black Women in the Workplace

Rha Goddess is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of nFormation, the membership community for professional women of color. Rha is also CEO of Move The Crowd and the entrepreneurial soul coach behind hundreds of breakthrough changemakers, cultural visionaries and social entrepreneurs. Her book The Calling: 3 Fundamental Shifts to Stay True, Get Paid, and Do Good was published in paperback in January 2021.

Eraina Ferguson is a journalist and TEDx speaker. In her memoir, My Good Life, she tells her story of giving birth to her daughter Taylor at the age of 20. Even after receiving a diagnosis of profound hearing loss and autism for her daughter Taylor, she went on to earn three academic degrees including one from Yale University. Her recent monologue, Listen to Her, was read by actress Marla Gibbs and featured at the WACO Theatre’s 50in50 event. Her writing has been featured on NBC Universal, Red Tricycle, LA Parents Magazine, and the LA Times. Eraina lives in southern California with her husband and children.

Chloe is the Atlanta Office Managing Director at Accenture - a leading global professional services company providing a broad range of services and solutions (in strategy, consulting, technology and operations) that deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. As the Office Managing Director, she leads Accenture’s vision and operations across Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama. Additionally, Chloe works with clients to identify and target superior business value and to achieve and sustain that business value while increasing customer satisfaction and business agility. She leads programs focused on transformation and rapid earnings expansion leveraging digital, and has worked with her clients through all phases of transformation from strategy through implementation. Since 2008, clients served have realized over $5 billion in net bottom line savings while building capabilities and fueling new growth and innovation. Chloe is known as an inspirational leader with a sincere passion for achieving tangible results with clients, employees and community partners.

Sherry Sims is the Founder of Black Career Women's Network, Chief Career Strategist, and a HR Professional. After working for more than a decade in the Human Resources industry, she wanted to utilize her experience differently. While working in the HR industry, Sherry was inspired to create an online forum due to a lack of access to other professional black women while seeking a mentor herself. She established a Linkedin group and named it Black Career Women's Network with the purpose to share career advice. After making the transition to becoming a Career Coach, the group began to gain traction, and black women were seeking her out for career advice. She soon discovered that other professional black women like herself were experiencing similar or various challenges in the workplace. That's when she developed a new passion for helping people strive for career success, specifically black women. With her newfound passion, she decided to expand Black Career Women's Network offline into a national organization to include resources, a coaching program, and an exclusive list of Mentors to develop its members further and provide local support.

Courtney Connley is an award-winning journalist and careers reporter for CNBC Make It. As a reporter, Courtney covers a range of career and financial topics with a focus on women, wage disparity and diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Prior to CNBC Make It, Courtney worked as a general assignment reporter at ABC News and worked as the careers editor for Black Enterprise magazine, where she covered content for both print and online. Courtney is a proud graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park and she’s a member of the National Association of Black Journalist and ColorComm.