RECORDING: The Importance of Black Women in Business

Sylvia Mukasa

An award-winning entrepreneur, Sylvia is Founder/CEO of GlobalX Investments Ltd/GlobalX Innovation Labs. GlobalX feeds into the innovation pipeline by closing the skills, funding and digital transformation gaps. In 2021, CIO Africa listed her among 35 Most Influential Women in Tech in Africa. In 2020, CIO East Africa listed her under 30+ Most Influential Women in Tech. She was also named 2020 Techpreneur of the Year- Over 30 in the Founder of the Year Awards (FOYA) East Africa. She has served as Country Co-Founder/Chapter Lead (Kenya) for Women in Tech Africa (WiTA), the largest female technology focused group in Africa and 2018 winner of the UN’s EQUALS in Tech Award, Leadership Category. Sylvia is a TechWomen Fellow, a Silicon Valley STEM program run by the US Department of State; launched by Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State. TechWomen empowers, connects and supports the next generation of women leaders in STEM from Africa, Central & South Asia, and the Middle East. Her role in the global and Kenya’s tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem earned her a special mention in the closing speech of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya by Maria Contreras-Sweet, former US Government’s Lead Minister on Entrepreneurship. She is an equity, diversity and inclusion advocate with a passion for gender, responsible technology and racial equity.

Sian Morson (She/Her)

Sian Morson is the ultimate multi-hyphenate; a change-agent, entrepreneur, author, and investor. An accomplished entrepreneur, Sian has founded 3 tech companies and has been at the forefront of technology for the past 15 years. In 2015, Sian was named one of 3 winners of the L’Oreal Women in Digital Award for her app Cast Beauty; the first Black woman to do so. Sian has authored two books, the best-selling Learn Design for iOS with Sketch and Design for iOS Development. She is currently at work on her 3rd book. Her educational background includes graduation from New York University’s Tisch School of the arts with a bachelor’s degree in Film & Television and a master’s degree in Electronic Art from Middlesex University in London. Currently, Sian is the Director of Strategy and Investments at the Starfish Accelerator – the first of its kind accelerator that invests in storytellers of color. In addition to her work at Starfish, Sian is an active angel investor and advisor to startups and founders including Funder.ai, GlowUp Games, and Kanna. Sian is regularly called upon to speak about topics ranging from diversity, to design and investing; and she has been featured globally in publications including the Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Essence, Inc. Magazine and Fast Company.

Jakiya Brown Thiaw (She/Her)

In 2016, Jakiya left the corporate side of beauty as a lead brand manager for brands like Giorgio Armani, Lancôme and Philosophy to pursue her dream of traveling the world.

Along the way, she reconnected with her unique gift of highly-engaged storytelling, built a community of over 20K, was featured in publications like Oprah Magazine and worked to grow hundreds of companies and personal brands with her fresh branding strategies and techniques.

She now consults tired 9-5ers, entrepreneurs, influencers, full-time business owners, and everyday 'grammers a-like, on strategies and systems she's used on $4M-$400M businesses to transform aspiring entrepreneurs into to business owners, ideas into income, and stories into impact; by building a solid business around their story, skillset & expertise.

Libryia Jones, PMP, ACP

I'm a Project Manager by trade and by habit. I have actual project plans for my personal life too! Here's a presentation I did on Agile in MDM: https://www.goamplifi.com/resources/agile-in-mdm/ Most believe a Project Manager's primary role is to tell the team what to do and when to do it. I see the role of a Project Manager as a servant leader. I remove road blocks so that my team can work to the best of their ability to deliver quality solutions to clients. I also believe great work can happen when we're having a good time. As a result, I'm pretty fun to work with. Here are a few results I'm proud of: • Earned $350,000 in revenues within 6 months through the design and development of content marketing, Facebook ads, and other social media platforms. • Reduced forecast variance risk by $1.2M per month by building database and developing automated processes which decreased manual processing from 4 days to 2 hours Technologies: • SharePoint Design • SharePoint Administrator • Microsoft Project • Microsoft Visio • Microsoft Access • Microsoft Office • Sales Force • PeopleSoft • Zoho Creator • JIRA • Zendesk • Saas • Cloud • My career experience is full of awesome projects, mostly enterprise software implementations, for companies across industries - retail, finance, manufacturing, and travel. I have also worked with SaaS implementations, Web Development, and some very interesting projects outside of my wheelhouse such as a salon build, hair care product launch, a