Black CIOs on the path to IT leadership

For aspiring Black IT professionals and students, the climb to the corner office is additional challenging. Even with more attention being paid of late to the opportunity and advancement gaps Black IT pros face, just 3.7% of all CIO positions in the US are filled by Black IT leaders.

To help Black CIO aspirants better understand the path to IT leadership, Howard University’s Center for Digital Business brought together six “trailblazing” CIOs for a Tech Titans Talk panel to share their experiences and insights working their way up in the tech industry.

Included in the discussion were: Derrick Pledger, chief digital and information officer at Maximus; John Russell, CIO of Northrop Grumman; Venice Goodwine, CIO of the US Department of the Air Force and Space Force; La’nai Jones, CIO of the Central Intelligence Agency; Glasford Hall, CIO of QinetiQ; and Nikki Allen, chief information tech and ops officer at Boeing.

Following is an in-depth look at what these storied CIOs shared as part of the discussion, including their thoughts on the fundamentals of the CIO role, how to pave a path to executive leadership, and advice they have for anyone with an eye on the C-suite. 

The importance of intentionality

For Boeing’s Nikki Allen, being intentional about her career path — and knowing what she does and doesn’t want — has proved key for advancing her career.

Allen, who was tapped for several early promotions right after an internship at Boeing, says these rapid promotions gave her the perception that if she just showed up and did her job well each day, she would continue to grow a fulfilling career. That perspective shifted, however, when one promotion landed her in a role she realized she hated within two weeks. At the time, Boeing required employees to stay in a role for at least 12 months before transferring, so she found herself trapped in a position she did not enjoy.

“I had to take a moment and reflect on ‘how did I end up here?’ — I ended up here because I allowed people who didn’t know me as well as I know me make decisions for me,” she said during the panel. “And I trusted them. The piece that was missing in that entire equation is that my own intentionality was not there. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I wasn’t very intentional about how to get what I want it. I just thought ‘I’ll show up every day do a great job. Someone will see me and believe in me, and all will be great from there.’”

During those next 12 months in the role, Allen says she began working on a career roadmap to ensure she never had to go through that experience again. The roadmap helped give her a clear picture of what she did — and did not — want from her career.

“That was the biggest moment I had early in my career — it’s okay for people to believe in you. You can have sponsors and mentors, but make sure you know what you want so you know what to say yes to and what to say no to,” Allen advised.

Venice Goodwine, of the Air Force and Space Force, added that it’s important to ask questions early in your career and get to the ‘why’ if you want to break down barriers. In fact, she said the main reason she decided to become a CIO was because someone early in her career told her that she couldn’t.

Goodwine also developed a career roadmap, in Excel, tracking the skills she currently had, the skills she needed to advance to the next step of her career, and the skills that were becoming outdated on her resume. This gave her a “pictorial view” of her career, she said, enabling her to better understand what she needed to accomplish to move toward the C-suite.

As for understanding your strengths as a worker, Northrop Grumman’s John Russell said it’s important to “bet on yourself.”

“You should always believe that there’s a seat for you at the table,” he said. “There’s a lot of folks who want to tell you no, but at the end of the day, you’re the person who knows whether you can do it.”

Maximus’ Derrick Pledger underscored how important it is not to undersell your skills and experience, because oftentimes women and those from underrepresented communities will look at a job description and feel that if they don’t fit every single requirement, they shouldn’t apply.

“There are folks that will bet on themselves, and they may only fit half of the requirements, but they still apply and they get the job,” Pledger said. “You have to be willing to bet on yourself. And if you feel like you have an aptitude to get a job, and you can get into there, you can learn and you can crush that job, then you need to apply. And I think all of us need to make sure and socialize within our community that if you don’t fit all the requirements, that’s okay. Do it anyway.”

Moving up and succeeding as CIO

The value of mentorship, sponsorship, and coaching was another point of emphasis for the panel — facets of career advancement that can’t be understated when it comes to paving a career path to the C-Suite.

Mentorship and sponsorship can open the door to new opportunities, ensuring your name is top of mind when it comes time for promotions, according to the panelists.

“Find coaches and mentors as soon as possible so that you can learn from them — I think there is so much wisdom to be learned — and then earn sponsorship. You can’t ask for a sponsor; you’ve got to earn it. And that’s through performance,” said Northrop Grumman’s Russell.

As you embark on a path to leadership, it’s important to “show up, because when you show up, you get noticed, and when you get noticed, doors get open for you to the point that someone will see you, take interest, and then kind of pull you in and show you the ropes. That doesn’t come automatically,” he says.

As for succeeding once you land the role, QinetiQ’s Glasford Hall said that, as CIO, his daily focus is on figuring out how to “enable the business” to achieve anticipated outcomes. In the past 20 years, the CIO role has gone from being a niche technical one, to becoming a general business role that is part of the C-Suite. CIOs are now “enablers” of the business, he said, “helping to drive revenue.”

And as the role of the CIO has grown, so has the “digital C-suite,” says the CIA’s La’nai Jones, referring to all executive technology roles, including CIO, CDO, CISO, CSO, and chief AI officer. “Everything is a team and group effort,” she said.

Northrop Grumman’s Russell pointed out that CIOs today are “curators” of technology, whose key skill is having a shrewd eye for picking the tools that will best “drive business value.”

“You really need to understand and be deliberate around the technology that you’re going after — it should be rooted in your organization’s strategy,” he says.

Maximus’ Pledger advised CIO aspirants “to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

“Problems are always going to be occurring every single day. [You internalize] that and recognize that it’s your entire job to solve problems and to remove friction,” he said, adding that doing so requires “alignment with all the other leaders to solve a particular problem.”

Defining your CIO leadership style

In addition to moving up the career ladder, CIO aspirants must also consider defining and developing their leadership style. For Boeing’s Allen, resiliency has proved key — being able to face challenges no matter how big, and seeing the company through whatever problems crop up.

“Resiliency is probably the biggest thing that I have — it’s embedded in my DNA. When problems arise, when crises arise when things happen that are unplanned and they’re big, and they’re scary, I run towards them. I lean in because I know if you see it through, there’s something incredible on the other side that works out for everyone’s benefit,” she said.

Allen also values empathy as a leader, understanding where everyone on her team is at, and what they might be dealing with outside of the office. Whether employees are caring for a family member, planning a big move, or simply have any “big moment” happening in their personal lives, she wants to be aware of that and empathetic of creating “psychological safety” at work.

Allen grew up with instability in her childhood and says she understands what it feels like to show up to school or work knowing everyone else likely has their needs met at home. She says that, growing up, if she’d had “environments that were psychologically safe,” she would have been more engaged in school, and she carries that mentality with her to the workplace.

“I take that with me in the way that I lead and lead my teams — creating an environment that’s psychologically safe, where people can share things and feel like they can open up and not be judged because of it,” Allen said.

The Air Force and Space Force’s Goodwine said authenticity and empathy have given her “clear self-awareness as a leader,” and she finds these traits to be important in “understanding the people that you work with and understand what they’re dealing with and what their challenges are,” she said. To do this, she advised asking questions, building relationships, and maintaining those relationships with consistency.

“The ability to build and maintain relationships will drive the type of leader that you are — I may be in charge, but I can never do it by myself. So I spend most of my time drinking a lot of coffee — I go to breakfast every Friday with people that I probably wouldn’t eat breakfast with normally, because it’s about relationships. Yes, it is about the network that we have, and the person that I could call, but I have to have a relationship with them first,” Goodwine said.

For Maximus’ Pledger, “leadership starts with empowerment” and “trusting your folks to get things done,” he said, adding that he believes in setting his employees up for success and entrusting them to do their jobs without micromanaging.

“It’s about creating the space and capacity for folks to go get their jobs done. And if there’s an impediment, then you stick your toes in, but if there’s no impediments, you let them go do their jobs. I’m all about making sure that my folks have the space time and capacity to go achieve outcomes,” Pledger said.

The importance of allyship in leadership

Allyship is critical in the technology industry, which has been predominantly white and male for decades. Leaders must consider everyone, not just those who remind them of themselves, and advocate for underrepresented groups in the organization. 

“I’m very transparent in my journey that my biggest advocates and allies were white males that pulled me up and gave me an opportunity to excel and succeed. Finding ways to connect with people other than say, your gender or your race, allows people to see themselves within you — I think that provided that connection,” the CIA’s Jones said.

QinetiQ’s Hall noted that, in terms of representational makeup, “the room has changed” over the years. Early in his career, Hall was the only Black person in the room, whether in a small team meeting or at an “off-site of 100 people.” But he said, as companies embrace ERGs and DEI initiatives, he has seen a shift in the diversity of the industry. As leaders start being more “intentional about pulling people forward” from marginalized groups, Hall said, it creates culture shifts that move the industry forward.

“I’ve seen the room change but I’ve seen it change because people were very intentional. And don’t mind causing a little bit of turbulence,” he said.

Northrop Grumman’s Russell noted that sometimes BIPOC leaders may feel “reluctant” to assemble more diverse teams due to potential “optics,” but that he’s seen a shift in that in the past 10 years. But when building inclusive teams, performance is what ultimately changes culture, he said, and IT leaders should build the team that is going to perform best for the organization.

“What I tell people is, nobody’s ever going to remember the optic when your team is performing and it’s successful. Pick the right person and forget all the rest. At the end of the day, that’s what changes culture,” he said. 

Hall received similar advice from a mentor early in his career, advising him not to be afraid to “build a team that looks like [him],” encouraging him to feel empowered to hire and promote BIPOC employees.

“We on ERGs, we always talk about allies, but who wants to be an ally to someone who won’t take the chance themselves? Right? If you’re not willing to take the chance, why are you asking me to take the chance? We can build the allyship that we need to scale — but the change in the culture starts right here at the leadership,” Russell said.