Interview with Doseke Akporiaye, WRISE

Catherine: Hi, I’m Catherine McLean, Founder and CEO of Dylan Green, and we’re at the WRISE Leadership Forum today in Washington, D.C., and I have the Executive Director of WRISE with me, Doseke Akporiaye. Thank you for joining me. As a CEO of WRISE, how do you envision the organization’s role in advancing gender diversity and inclusion within the renewable energy industry, and what initiatives are you most proud of?

Doseke: So, I mean, we are really excited, first of all, for our conference this year. We’re at 800 people this year. We’re going to be 20 (years old) next year, and it’s really just been a privilege to be able to advocate for this community of women. The ways that we look to do is build on our existing programs of ensuring that we are empowering women, ensuring that we’re developing them, ensuring that we’re influencing the leadership of industries, the industry and organizations within the industry, to create the right environment for them to thrive, pushing for more equitable, family, women-friendly policies within organizations. So that they can grow and thrive within those organizations, making sure that we’re continuing to enhance access, that women have access, access to opportunities, resources, other people through our 50 chapters across the country that we can connect on. We’re launching our mentorship program next year, where we each call out about 300 people from different organizations within the industry, and we connect and match them to mentors, so that they can get the support, the advice, the time, so that they need to grow within the organization. So those are some of the ways we’re doing it. We launched our executive women program summit at this leadership conference. It was such a success. We are looking to build on that, because these women leaders are the ones that are going to drive the change that we need within the industry.

Catherine: One of the things that you just said, that hasn’t been mentioned today, that I just want to highlight quickly, family. Family, because I was saying earlier that like, it takes a village when you’re a mom or a caregiver. And so I think that’s really important that we are supporting women, but we’re also supporting families.

Doseke: And that’s important because you find that, especially for women, sometimes they have to, there’s always a trade-off. But there’s always a trade-off. I mean, you see successful women, and yes, they’re successful in their own right and deserve it, but they’ve had to trade off at some point to change something. You know, people who are here at the conference, they’ve left families behind just so that they can be here. And it’s an additional cost. There are people going through the hurricane right now. Some people have not lost their homes. They don’t know what they’re going to go back to, but some of them are here. And I think that speaks to the power of this community, that they can draw strength from this community. But I’ll tell you one thing that gladdened me during the conference today, while I listened to one of the keynote speakers, I heard a baby cry. And I don’t know what it was, but that just made me so happy. Because that was a true reflection of the WRISE community, right? That’s what we want. You can still accomplish those goals. You can still develop yourself. You can still grow, but you don’t have to give up. You don’t have to compromise so much to be able to do that.

Catherine: The renewable energy industry is rapidly growing, but diversity in leadership is still low. What strategies does Rice employ to support women in underrepresented groups in advancing their careers into space?

Doseke: Another great question. Like I said, we launched our executive women’s summit at this leadership conference. The fest in the history of the organization, probably the way we’re going to do the first in the industry. We had 30 C-suite and board members that were in attendance. And it just confirmed for us the need. So we are going to build and expand this program so that more women can come in, more women can participate in it. We intend to build a six, nine, maybe 12 month program. We’re still working on it, but we wanted to pilot it at the leadership forum and see if there was an appetite for it. This is the kickoff that we’ve done. We already have some follow-on activities that have to do with peer networking amongst them, follow-on and convening at industry conferences where they normally go to. Those are some of the follow-on activities that we have from this conference. We’re looking also at can they get board positions? What would it take? Can we develop some kind of scholarship for C-suites and women? Again, people of minorities that would not have access to these things, how can we build some kind of scholarship that will pull in these women that ordinarily would not even know about the opportunities of where those things are? That’s the program that we’ve launched and we intend to build it out throughout the year.

Catherine: One thing I just want to mention about that board position, somebody said something really interesting to me today. Kerry Dugan, I was interviewing, and she mentioned that, and I can’t believe I didn’t know this, but when you put your open to work on the recruiter portion, on the green banner, that there is a job title of board, like if you were looking for board work. I think it’s more than women, they’re listening to know that and to take that if they’re interested, because people don’t know unless you tell them that you’re looking for that work is what’s their point. I think I just want to highlight that.

Doseke: I think you’re so right, because a lot of women are afraid to be ambitious. They’re afraid to come across as quote-unquote aggressive. They’re afraid to come across as wanting more. And I think those are some of the myths that were dispelling a governance like this. You have to just speak out what it is you want. If you don’t speak it out, people are not going to know. And women that are at a certain level, they do hear about opportunities. Those that are on boards, they do hear about other opportunities. And if they can’t meet those needs, if they’ve heard you say you’re looking for, then they’ll be like, hey, I know someone that can fill those roles.

Catherine: Yeah, because even as a recruiter, like if someone said, I’m here, Catherine, here is a board position, the women that would pop to mind that would be good for that are women that have said, I’m interested in a board position.

Doseke: So you just have to keep on speaking out and letting everyone know what you’re interested in, what your next steps are, what you want to do. Someone will remember.

Catherine: Yeah. How does WRISE collaborate with clean tech companies to create a more inclusive workforce and renewable energy? And what impact have you seen from these partnerships? So you have to use Dylan Green as an example.

Doseke: One thing that we’ve done is again, Dylan Green was kind enough to partner with us on this, but just even creating this opportunity. The theme for our conference is amplifying all voice. So just even being present here, you are creating access, a lot of opportunity for people of multiple voices to be heard. You know, one. But the second is the list of people who have curated for this. It has been deliberate to ensure that there are multiple voices, multiple perspectives. So I think working with each of those partners, being very deliberate in the types of relationships that you want, ensuring that wherever we’re convening, we are creating access for our community to reach out to these companies and to be able to just ensure that they’re pushing for their mission, they’re pushing for their mandate. These are the ways that we partner with. Our partnerships are deliberate. They’re in furtherance of our mission. They are in furtherance of our community and the needs of our community and what are the needs of our communities to be heard. So what we’re doing here through the series of podcasts is similar to our speaker video database, which is there’s so many amazing women out there. And they’re not known. People don’t know that you need to go to search for them. They can speak on any topic that you want in the energy space. They can be panelists, they can be keynote speakers, they can be moderators. They’re all there. So for us partnering with clean tech companies, it’s really about saying, OK, what does that clean tech company do? And how does that meet the need? I give another example. There was a speaker in an executive session yesterday, Ximi Rao, who is driving an AI company. She’s developed a platform that uses AI to connect like senior women. So if I was going to partner with that clean tech company, it will be specifically because we’re developing executive women programming. It’s not easy for them to meet with each other, connect with each other, but we’ll leverage on that because, again, it will be in response to the needs of our community.

Catherine: Do you know what I also think is cool about doing this and the opportunity that we’ve had to work together, this leadership forum, is the access. Because there are 800 women. So a lot of women. But it was sold out. And I know that it’s important to you. And I agree with this, that there is an intimacy for this and it doesn’t get too big. But there are also hundreds and thousands of other women in our industry that I would hope would listen to these incredible women that we’ve had on today and feel like they were maybe a part of this as well.

Doseke: For sure. I mean, that’s an amazing point. And if we open it up, we’ll probably have 2,000 people. But I think what you said is critical that people still feel that they are part of this. People still can access it. People can get a vibe and get the spirit. We can totally capture it. But be having the opportunity to share the voices of people that you’ve interviewed is how we’re here. I think that’s important and critical.

Catherine: So the last question I have is, what are some of the key challenges women in clean tech face today? And how is WRISE working to address these through mentorship advocacy and professional development programs?

Doseke: So I think some of the biggest challenges are just knowing about the opportunities that exist. One, and the way we do that is through we’re launching an advocate program where we give people a toolkit and they say, you go into the community, your network, and tell them how you got to the energy industry. Tell them about the opportunities, the job opportunities, the different roles that exist. We have our career fairs and our job boards where we’re pushing more all the roles that exist beyond technical roles, beyond engineering roles. Their HR roles, their supply chain roles, their operations roles, their legal roles, their finance roles. They’re all these things that people need to be aware. And so we do that for our job boards. We do that for our career fairs and through the advocate program that we want to launch. I think the other thing is in terms of access to opportunities, one thing that we’ll see is a lot of our corporate partners, they actually want to engage more with our channel, with people. They want to reach people. So we have corporate partners that are spread across the U.S. And they’re like, how do we build a community when we’re in like 40 states? And in some of those states, they have one woman, right? In the operation, not because they don’t want more work, but that’s just what they have.
So one way is we’re plugging into the business strategy of the organization.
Our goal at WRISE is to say, okay, as an organization, what is your strategy and how can WRISE help you to accomplish that from a recruitment perspective, from an engagement perspective, from a building a community perspective, wherever you are in the United States throughout 50 chapters across the country. You can engage at the chapter level. Your employees can engage at the chapter level. They can meet other women in the industry. They can find out about development, training, yoga, whatever that premiere I want. So we want to be an extension of business strategy for organizations. From a people development perspective, from an organizational development perspective. And the last thing is in terms of international leadership, how do we influence these leaders so they clear the right environments, right? And we’re looking as we go forward as an organization to begin to advise in terms of policy, HR policies, DEI policies, to give them some perspective of what our community is saying that they need so that they can build the right systems, structures and processes for their employees.

Catherine: And I think it’s just really, it’s such an important point that it is. There’s lots of good feeling. You get a lot of good feeling here, but it also just makes business sense for everyone to have a more diverse workforce.

Doseke: It makes sense. I mean, it just makes sense. I agree. But the reality is it doesn’t happen. It makes sense. So we have to just keep on working with our partners, keep on working with the community, keep on working with the industry to make sure that we get them.

Catherine: Well, thank you so much for putting this incredible forum on. Thank you so much for doing it.

Doseke: Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you so much.