We may be living in 2021, but recent studies show that since 2014, just 1.5 per cent of senior roles in UK businesses are held by Black employees.
10,000 Black Interns leads the change to cultivate underrepresented talent in the workforce, and joins forces with over 700 companies offering incredible paid internships and opportunities for summer 2022.
pan-African met with programme director Esther Odejimi-Uzokwe to discuss UK industry’s need for diverse talent, her journey to working with the programme, and how it has exceeded all expectations.
10,000 Black Interns aims to combat racial inequality in the workplace by offering paid work experience, training and development opportunities for young Black talent across a wide range of sectors over the course of five years from 2021.
Can you give us a bit of background as to how the programme came about?
It started with a few WhatsApp messages as one of our co-founders wanted to host a dinner for Black investment managers in the City of London, and he quickly realised that out of the many investment firms that exist, you can count the amount of senior Black portfolio managers on one or maybe two hands. London is the UK’s financial hub, and if very few of the people managing the money look like me and those applying to the programme, that is a problem.
This gave rise to getting 100 investment management firms to offer one internship to a Black student who is studying at any UK university across any year of study whereby they would sign up for an internship lasting a minimum of six weeks and pays a minimum of the local living wage.
This was set against the backdrop of the murder of George Floyd last year, and our co-founders approached their peers, called up fellow CEOs and portfolio managers, and within less than 24 hours they had more than 100 investment management firms saying that they wanted to be part of it – our founders realised they were knocking on an open door!
Wow, that’s amazing – how many companies and interns have you worked with up to now?
We were called 100 Black Interns at the time, but we onboarded 200 investment management firms, put about 40 to 50 on a waiting list, and we now have 500 interns this summer alone. There were a number of early indicators of success: we opened up applications expecting to receive 200 to 300, but we ended up receiving 2,500 applications, and 2,165 of those were eligible.
Of those applications, 59 per cent came from non-Russell Group universities, which was a big win, because not only do we want to increase participation of Black candidates in industry, it’s about increasing access for the kind of candidate that has the grit and intelligence to succeed but on paper, may not have attended a ‘target’ institution, and giving them the chance to thrive as well in these industries that they otherwise might not have had access to.
At the junior level of investment management, they tend to hire about 20 per cent of people who identify as women, and 41 per cent of our applications came from women, which translated into 45 per cent of the offer rate. Where it’s not 50 per cent or more which is where we would love it to be because women are also heavily underrepresented in investment management, this is over double what you usually see in industry, so these early indicators of success were evidence to us that not only was it the right time, but both industry and candidates were ready. We also had firms in other industries wanting to be involved with the programme too, which is when the conversation of 10,000 Black Interns happened.
Within the space of a few months, we added a couple of zeros onto the end of our name as we morphed from 100 to 10,000 Black Interns, and investment management is now one of 24 sectors that are represented under the programme.
When will your next application cycle be taking place?
We are opening up applications for 10,000 Black Interns in September 2021, and the premise is the same – a minimum of six weeks, and a minimum of the local living wage. Internships can pay more and last longer than this, but we set the bare minimum.
It can be within any internal business stream of the firms who have signed up, and altogether they have pledged around 2,500 internships towards next year, so right now we’re in full execution mode.
What kind of impact do you hope this will have on the UK working environment?
The hope is that it will have a long-term impact on the UK working environment – an internship can be an important jump-start to a career, and it’s the perfect place to start building a pipeline for an industry or a business, because junior talent is the future of industry leadership.
We talk about issues in terms of Black representation in senior leadership and middle management within firms, and you’re not going to be able to celebrate having people that look like me in senior leadership when you haven’t put in the work at the junior level to create, maintain and nurture that pipeline in the first place.
The hope that we have and the early indicators that we’re seeing are that this will have a long-term residual impact across industry which pay dividends over the course of the next five years, and hopefully businesses across sectors will have a strong pipeline of junior Black talent, and they will be able to nurture them throughout their career so that in the near future, we can look across trading floors, marketing and advertising floors, and broadcasting floors and see a much-needed diverse pool of talent.
What kinds of sectors do your interns go into, and which are the most popular?
If you look at the Black community and the sectors and industries we are encouraged to pursue by our parents – this is a key facet of the Black community as our parents really do play a huge role in the kinds of careers we set our eyes on and often it’s areas like accounting, engineering, finance, medicine, and technology – we expect those to be popular, but there’s a huge range aside from these as well.
Construction, education, the not-for-profit sector, investment and retail banking, utilities and infrastructure, consumer retail, management and strategy consulting, law, The Bar, media, the arts, sport… we have so many sectors and companies, and in total, there are 24 fantastic sectors to choose from.
And anyone who is interested in looking at the firms we have signed up with, I encourage them to go to the ‘sectors’ page on our website to have a look and see what might be suitable for you.
Can you share any stories of any interns that have had significant career boosts due to the programme?
It was originally supposed to be 100 interns this year, but we have over 500 of them in industry as we speak and many of them are rounding off their internship experience right now. Every single one of them is a success story in the sense that they have gained industry experience that they may not otherwise have had by participating in this programme, and we also have some candidates who have been offered full-time positions off the back of their placements.
While that is not the indicator of success of the programme, it is an indicator of success – the reason I say this is because our eligibility criteria is so broad and in order for full-time positions to be the focus for us, we would have to only be accepting applications from graduate, penultimate and final-year students, but we are open to anyone across any year of their higher education experience.
It has been fantastic so far, and we’re looking forward to maintaining this momentum over the next five years.
Could you tell us a bit about your journey to being Programme Director at 10,000 Black Interns?
Yes! I’m from Hackney, East London born and bred, and I am state-comprehensively educated. I went to a primary school that was four footsteps away from my front door, and then went to a secondary school up the road and I was there from year seven through to my A-levels.
I come from a traditional Nigerian home where education is a big thing and my mum was always set on Oxford or Cambridge for at least one of her children – I was the defiant one who always rolled my eyes when she mentioned it, like ‘come on, let’s be realistic!’ but I ended up getting some really good support from my secondary school at the time, which was also contrasted by a lack of support from other members of staff.
I remember a situation where the school took me and other high-performing students to Cambridge University’s open day, and I missed one of my A-level classes. The teacher asked “Where is Esther?” because it was only a small class of about 15 students, and they said “She’s gone on the school trip to Cambridge.” The following day, I was told that for 20 minutes, the teacher rambled on about the subject of ‘why does Esther think she’s capable of going to a university like that? People that look and speak like her don’t go to those kinds of universities, does she even realise the work that’s required?’
This is the kind of thing that you face at a state-comprehensive sometimes, but that was counteracted by support from other staff that I will forever be grateful for – a big shout out to Mr. Wilks, Mrs. Dhesi, Mrs Richardson, and most of all, Mr. Foster who unfortunately passed away the day before I got my A-level results.
I ended up getting into Oxford and graduated in 2017 with a degree in Theology and Religion, but during my time there I was the only Black student on campus at Pembroke College, with no other Black students in my year group. There was another one in first year, but he ended up ‘rusticating,’ or suspending his studies, and he didn’t return.
It was frustrating because being from East London, I’m not used to being in the minority to such an extreme extent, so I started a social enterprise in 2015 during my second year where we worked with state comprehensive schools to increase the pipeline of Black students getting into other Russell Group institutions.
For a year after graduating, I focused on building the team and helped it to run independently of myself, and then ended up working in the City as many do as an investment banker for just under two years, which was a steep learning experience for me. I left in 2020, just at the cusp of the pandemic, and for a while it was difficult to find something else, but I just used my time to go back into entrepreneurship and work on an online cooking business which was fun, and that got me through the pandemic.
Then I got headhunted for the opportunity with 10,000 Black Interns, and after joining the team in January 2021, here I am eight months in and absolutely loving it. The trustees are phenomenal minds, and have really supported my development in the role.
What would you say has been a defining moment for you on the 10,000 Black Interns journey so far?
There have been so many – running an organisation of this scale is a difficult thing to do. You often get tired, and you get dealt frustrating roadblocks, but even just simple things really define the work that I’m doing, like getting emails and calls from our candidates on the verge of tears with gratitude that through the programme they’ve been able to gain valuable experiences that have opened up doors of opportunity for them.
For me, this makes every roadblock, difficulty, and stressful day worth it times 50 – we would be here forever if I went through every moment one by one, but I’d definitely say we’re a very intern-centric programme, and to get that feedback from the interns about how we’ve positively impacted their prospects, their future, and their career, means everything.
What are the plans for the next five years for the programme?
We are very much focused on delivering what we have set out to deliver. It really does put us out in the firing line – we’re called 10,000 Black Interns, so the world is expecting us to deliver those internships!
And for clarity, that number is aggregated over the next five years, so we have a target of delivering 2000 internships each year, for five years.
What advice would you give to young Black students feeling like a high-quality work experience placement is out of their reach?
Apply – there is no stronger message than the results we had from launching 100 Black Interns. Nobody should approach this programme believing a good-quality internship or placement is out of their reach, and we’re incredibly focused on making sure we are not perceived as an organisation that focuses only on candidates from ‘target’ Russell Group universities, because organisations do exist that operate in that way, and that is not us.
Wherever you are studying, whichever year group you are in, as long as you are eligible to apply, you can just show up. Even if it doesn’t result in an internship, there are many opportunities to upskill and develop with us, as we also have training workshops, 10,000 Black Interns application workshops, interview workshops, and other resources that as long as you are Black and eligible, all you have to do is show up and receive.
I would not want anyone to look at this programme and think ‘I’m not worthy of an opportunity.’ As long as you match our eligibility criteria, you are exactly who we’re looking for, so please do send your application in for an internship and engage with the resources available.
Lastly, what do you love most about being Nigerian?
The rich culture and, being a massive foodie, part of that is the food! Even our languages – the names of our children and people in our community have so much power, history and context behind them, and I love that part of my identity. My dad is Yoruba and my mum is Igbo, so I celebrate the merging of these two cultures. I love our music, our food, and how resilient we are in terms of passing it all down to future generations.
I was born in the UK, but I class myself as a Nigerian woman in terms of how I think and how I would love to set up my family, so I really appreciate that about our nation and the generations that came before us, and how diligent they have been in instilling in the generations they have given birth to, even outside of Nigeria.
To find out more about 10,000 Black Interns and to check if you could be eligible to apply for their internship opportunities, visit their website.
