Entrepreneur Shannon Morales launched her startup Echo Me Forward out of a frustration born from her own experiences navigating the employment landscape in the male-dominated field of finance. Echo Me Forward offers an SaaS software tool that enables employers to streamline their outreach process to find and hire diverse tech talent with greater ease. The company also provides digital content, professional networking opportunities, career coaching, and mentorship to ensure that Black and brown professionals are equipped with the tools they need to succeed. In response to the surge of support for the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice in this country and around the world, countless employers have pledged support and committed to more equitable hiring practices — Morales wants to ensure they follow through. “Right now it’s Echo Me Forward’s time to be out there helping all of the companies that are saying that they want to be intentional about these hiring strategies and making sure that we’re helping them get there,” she says. In this conversation, Morales discusses the experiences that prompted her to launch Echo Me Forward, her work with the Latinx tech nonprofit Techqueria, and another project that she started to promote safe social-distancing in response to COVID-19, called Stealth.ify.
Music for this podcast is produced by Kilamanzego.