Brick by Brick: Building an Idea into a Movement

Katya Valasek:

We're joined today by Laurie Robinson Hayden, a lawyer and entrepreneur who founded a nonprofit that's making a real impact on lawyer professional development. But today's episode is not particularly about the work of your nonprofit, Corporate Council Women of Color—though, of course, we'll talk about it. Instead, it's about starting and running an organization. You graduated in 1998 and worked for several years doing management-side labor and employment at large firms before moving over to CBS in 2002, where you spent 18 years. And it was in 2020 that you became the CEO of Corporate Council Women of Color. But the story behind the founding was actually more than 20 years ago. So let's start there.

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

So immediately after law school, I was a young lawyer starting out in New York City, and I was at my very first law firm. I was the only African-American lawyer in the labor and employment group. And for me, I felt isolated and I felt alone. I was raised in a historical black college environment. I went to North Carolina Central University. And my neighborhood growing up was predominantly African-American. So for me to then go into a work environment where I didn't see anyone who looked like me, sound like me, it was a cultural shock. And I just longed and wanted and desired those connections.

Katya Valasek:

Did anything change when you moved to CBS?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

When I moved to CBS, which was great, they had many women of color at CBS that I had not seen at my two prior law firms. But we found that women still needed career strategies. They still needed information. They still needed connections. So we started out, it was about ten of us, having these informal dinners in New York City. We would talk about our journey, what we were working on, the different issues we were facing, how we were navigating politics. And after this one dinner, I said, “I'm going to create a networking directory. I'll email you all a template, and then I want you to fill it out and send it right back to me.” It had everyone's name, where they went to law school, and practice area.

Now I have to note, this is before Facebook and before LinkedIn. So this was really groundbreaking, my little email document that I sent around. So I sent it to the ten people. Those ten people sent it to five, and literally by the end of the week, we had found 50 women of color lawyers who worked in New York City, and we thought that was huge.

Katya Valasek:

So how did this document initially begin the process of professional development among these 50 women? How did you use it?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Well, it started out with this networking directory that I created. I sent it to the 50 that we found. I went to Office Depot, printed it up, mailed it to each person. And then each person came back and said, “you forgot four more people.” So the networking directory just kept growing and growing and growing. And literally by the end of the month, we had found almost 1,000 women of color in New York City, in different parts of the country.

And it turned into a career strategies conference, because at the dinner, the women said, we need more than just food and wine. We need help with our careers. We need help with how to negotiate. And I said, “you know what? We will start an annual career strategies conference.” And that's how our career strategies conference got started.

Katya Valasek:

So pretty humble beginnings, just a group of professionals grabbing dinner, grew over time, really through grassroots efforts. At what point did you decide that it was time to incorporate?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

The way we ended up getting incorporated is something that I didn't plan, but it was something that I fell into. Like I said, we had the networking directory and we were meeting informally through these dinners throughout the country. We'd have one in California, one in Chicago. And one day I got a telephone call from Lorie Almon. She's now the managing partner at Seyfarth Shaw, which I worked at.

And she said, “I am aware of the work that you're doing and our firm believes in it. We want to provide you with pro bono legal services. And we want to help you to incorporate your organization as an official nonprofit.” So I remember I was coming out of the Viacom building and I was going down the escalator and I was thinking to myself, “holy smokes, I can't believe like this idea that I had in my Harlem apartment is now morphing into an actual 501c3.” I took a deep breath and then I took the plunge.

Katya Valasek:

One of the things that happens when you incorporate is it formalizes your mission. Did you have a hard time at that first attempt of writing your mission statement or were you living that every day?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Well, we were living it every day. And what I did was for the group of women that were in New York City, I remember I had a little threefold brochure and I collected everyone's thought on what the mission and what the vision will be, and I compiled it. And that's how we started off articulating our goals, our mission, what we hoped to achieve, how we hoped to accomplish it. And then it really became that the word became flesh. And what we wrote down is what we started moving in the direction to try to achieve.

Katya Valasek:

So someone approached you with the suggestion that you should incorporate into a nonprofit. Did you ever think about trying to work through an existing nonprofit before you got that phone call?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Never. Because, you know, when you're building something from scratch, my day looked like this. I was a lawyer by day at CBS. I had a full caseload. So I would literally go to work and get there at 8 a.m. I'd leave at 6 o'clock. I'd come home to my Harlem apartment. I'd have dinner and then I would work on CCWC from 8 p.m. to about 2 a.m, every single night. This occurred for about three years in a row. So sometimes when you're building an organization brick by brick, you're in the nitty gritty. And it's sometimes hard to look up to see what your goals will be. But, you know, externally, through the person who called me, it helped shape the goal. And then externally from our members who articulated, we need more. Like when I started doing that networking directory, I never thought we'd be doing an annual conference. And last month, we went to Las Vegas where we celebrated our 20th annual conference and had record attendance of 2,000 people. I would never imagine that from that first dinner with the ten people at B. Smith's restaurant in New York City.

Katya Valasek:

Do you think you would have eventually incorporated on your own or would it have stayed just the sort of grassroots-word-of-mouth organization it had been?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

I do believe that eventually we would have become a nonprofit because many people in our organization, they're very forward-thinking. The work was so needed back in 2004 and in 2024, the work is still just as needed. So the need is there, the work is going to continue and we would have formalized our structure.

Katya Valasek:

A nonprofit corporation needs to have a board of directors. The minimum number differs from state to state. How did you decide who you were going to include on day one when you formed your board?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Well, when we formed our board, I didn't want people who were just lawyers. I needed people who could move beyond yes-no answers to creativity. Creativity and problem solving, creativity and innovation. So I remember I had a meeting with a young lady, her name was Cynthia Bookhart Adams and she's still a friend today. She's the deputy general counsel at TD Bank. But when I was first starting, she said, you need a website and at a minimum, your website needs to be hooked up to PayPal. I remember she told me that and I never thought about a website. I had never thought about PayPal, but having the website was a way that we needed to market and PayPal was the way we had to collect the registration fee for our conference. So I populated the board with people who could think outside of the box and bring something to the table that I didn't have that could help to just move and propel us forward.

Katya Valasek:

At that point in time, were you getting paid?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

I was not getting paid because many people who know about starting a business and starting a nonprofit, there's rarely enough money for the operation, the programming, and your compensation. So for pretty much, you know, almost two decades, I worked for free for Corporate Council Women of Color, to help it build, to help it get on its feet, to help put it into our programming and our outreach and money for student scholarships. It's the sacrifice of the founder.

Katya Valasek:

So you were very deliberate in trying to find the people to sit on your board. You wanted that diversity of perspective. You wanted problem solvers. How did the board feel about you?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Well, they didn't kick me out, so I guess they felt pretty good about me. But I think as a leader, the one thing that I like to do, and I think that's why we've been so successful and it works, I often have to remind myself the importance of a growth mindset. Because sometimes as a founder, you can take on this mindset of, well, that idea didn't come from me. I know all the answers. But the best answers and the best solutions come from other people. So I always have to be in the mindset to listen to other people's ideas, recognize the ideas, and if they make sense, try to implement them. And I think that's why we have been able to sustain and be so successful, because you're in the customer service business and you have to listen to your customers.

Katya Valasek:

We're going to move forward in time. We're going to have a discussion about making the move to being full time for the organization. But I want to set the stage in those last remaining moments of you working full time at CBS, thinking about making the move. So let's fast forward to 2019. What has changed?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

When I started, I started in my Harlem apartment with a laptop, a printer, and an AOL connection. But what has happened over almost two decades, getting us to about 2019, is that the organization has grown, our membership has grown, our conference has grown, our outreach has grown. And I, you know, had always been pretty much the sole person doing the labor. And I could no longer be the one stuffing, stamping, sticking, and mailing the envelopes. I had to find people who could do that to free my mind to focus on the bigger picture issues.

Then the pandemic hit and thankfully I was able to transition in 2020 to doing Corporate Counsel full time, because what occurred was, many of our members were not able to attend the annual conference. And we had to pivot significantly to create a virtual conference. I literally had to build it from scratch, but it was a very time-consuming process. And because we were able to pivot, we were able to save our organization. A lot of organizations folded during 2020 because they could not offer that annual conference, and many people asked for refunds, and they lost a lot of money.

Katya Valasek:

So it's interesting that your transition coincided with transitions for all of us. If the pandemic had not hit, what would you have needed personally and professionally to get to the point of being able to go full time? Would it have happened anyway?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

It would have had to happen anyway because, like I said, the organization has grown so much, and the level of work that is required, like I said, I would get home at 7 p.m. I would work till 2 a.m. That is not sustainable over the long haul. And I will note that many of the years that I did CCWC, I was not married. I did not have a child. So I got married in 2013, and I had my son in 2017. Managing now, marriage, motherhood, dealing with a full-time job, dealing with a nonprofit that's growing, you know, something has to give, and there comes a time when you have to transition in your new life, in your new role. I look back and I said, there's no way I could have done CCWC in 2004 if I had had a toddler and a husband. I just would not have been able to do it.

Katya Valasek:

You had done so much on your own for so long. Did you have a hard time letting go of some of those responsibilities, or were you ready?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

There's a part that you've nurtured it from birth to the next stage, and you kind of do feel like, “well, only I can do that, and no one can do it like I can.” But I've learned over time that if you release some of those responsibilities and you trust your team members to do it, you will get the best result. So I'm a work in progress. There's some things that I still have to be very hands-on to do, but I also know because I know how to do it, if I turn it over to someone, I know whether they're doing it properly or not.

Katya Valasek:

Can you give us an example of something that someone took over and did differently than you, but it was better than maybe you could have managed on your own?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

We have a team member. She helps us with IT. And I like to joke with her because I think she's like 15 years ahead of us. But she was always talking to us about QR codes, and we would say,” oh, there she goes talking about these QR codes.” And when the pandemic came and you couldn't touch anything and you had to do everything with QR codes, then we're like, tell us about those QR codes again. So we utilize the QR codes. It helps us with the registration, and it helped to streamline a lot of our processes.

Katya Valasek:

How do you make sure someone like that who has an idea that keeps getting put off is still happy in their position? You finally came around to QR codes, she was probably like, finally. But how do you encourage someone to continue to come up with ideas and be forward thinking like that, even if they're not all adopted immediately?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Usually people with ideas, plural, they're going to put forth several ideas. You can't shoot down all the ideas. There are ideas that work, there are ideas that don't work, but you have to at least try to adopt or implement some of them to keep your team motivated and encouraged.

Katya Valasek:

What's the thing that she's talking about now that's in the future that none of us understand fully yet? Does she have a new QR code she's talking about?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

She helped us again because as our conference started to grow, we would hire temps from different cities to help us pass out the name badges. And what we found was there was a lot of human error with some of the temps because they weren't that great with alphabetical order. But she told us, look, we need to automate that whole process and let people check into a kiosk and have their name printed.

Well what was great about this idea is it saved us so much time, so much energy, so much human error was removed because we're relying on the computers. And we're now able to get analytics: who checked in, who didn't check in, what time they checked in. And the technology has just made our lives so much better. But, you know, like I said, it takes a while sometimes for the lawyer to see the vision of the technology people. But I've learned to just lean in and embrace it, try to understand it. But the technology has made us better.

Katya Valasek:

So you saw a problem and you came up with a solution. And the conversation we've just been having is highlighting the fact that problem solvers tend to continue to see problems around them and to think up solutions, whether it's technology, professional development. How do you manage to keep such a tight focus on the mission that you are striving to provide?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

There are different influences that come around when you're running a nonprofit. You have some sponsors who might come around and say, “well, we gave you this money, so now we want you to focus on this instead of that.” And you have to be able to draw the line and say, “your money is great, but it's not that important.” The mission is more important than the money. You have to be willing to do that. And for the organizations that we have observed that are not able to set that boundary, they have crashed and they've burned. And we don't want that. We know, because we have walked in the shoes of our constituents, what they need, what they're going through, what they're up against.

And in 2024, they still have those same needs. We have a lot of lawyers who are first generation lawyers, but for the information they get from us, they may not have a mother, a grandmother, a father, or brother who can tell them, “On your next job, negotiate. This is how you handle the performance evaluation. This is how you deal with saboteurs in the workplace.” These are all the things we need to know as we go through our lives. And I'm just grateful that, our organization, we have many people who can share their life's journey with other people and we don't have to start from scratch.

Katya Valasek:

So sometimes an organization will update its mission as time passes. Have you all had to update CCWC's mission?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

Our mission is still the same, but our programs have expanded. We started out here in the United States. One of the things we will be doing over the next ten years, we will be focusing more on our global footprint. We had an event in London. We're going to keep that going and build chapters across the globe. I think that's important because we also found that there are people in different countries who are having the same challenges that we're having right here in the United States. So we're working on that. We have a partnership with the United Nations and we're looking forward to building that and developing that. And then, what's always near and dear to my heart is going back and helping our pipeline, going to the law schools, talking to the students. It's not enough to just go to work and do the work. You have to do so much more.

Katya Valasek:

So one of the important roles your organization plays in the corporate legal world is facilitating mentorship. That is the need that came up at that first dinner with ten professional women out in New York. Who do you turn to when you have a question or you need some help?

Laurie Robinson Hayden:

My mother is my mentor. She has always been my mentor. And when I was a young lawyer in New York City trying to figure out my steps and my career before there was CCWC, I could always turn to my mother and she would give me the best advice. Even today, she gives me the best practical advice.

When I was starting out in my career, I would also get help from the support staff. The secretaries at those law firms and in the corporations, they've been around for a long time. They've seen a lot and they can help with politics or, like I say, politricks in the workplace. And then when I'm really looking to take myself to the next level, I hire executive coaches. They're all in because I'm paying them. I'm all in because I'm paying them. And, you know, because I'm putting skin in the game, when I talk to them, they have an action plan. OK, here's the issue. Let's collaborate. And then there are different people that I talk to who give me great advice. And I'm always striving to find people who can elevate me, take me higher, help me think about the things that I haven't thought about. That's how we all grow.