Porter Braswell is the CEO and co-founder of Jopwell, a technology platform that helps black, Latinx and Native American students find opportunities for career advancement. Braswell shared his story with Auburn students as part of the University’s Critical Conversations speaker series on March 3.
Braswell talked to students about building a business, becoming an entrepreneur and his passion for diversifying the workforce. A Yale graduate, Braswell and his business have won many awards from magazines such as Entrepreneur, Business Insider and Vanity Fair.
Braswell had the idea to start a tech company that would build community and give referrals to people who belonged to a racial minority. He and his co-founder started Jopwell by working with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Facebook and MasterCard.
He explained how Jopwell, as a company, has a mission to get to know people on a level that goes deeper than a resume.
Through Jopwell, people can upload their information and things about themselves that could qualify them for jobs they might not be able to find on their own, he said.
“By a member creating their profile and giving us their information, we can not only be that connectivity but can also be that friend or that mentor that they may not have access to,” Braswell said. “We like to operate in the middle and be that connective tissue for both the companies and for the individuals that are leveraging the platform.”
He explained how diversity is a crucial aspect in the workplace.
“We believe that the value of diversity is that when you bring people with different experiences, contacts and backgrounds into an organization, they’ve experienced the world in different ways, they should help fix problems in a different way than the majority might,” Braswell said.
Braswell discussed how, by 2040, people of color will be the majority of the population in the United States. He said it’s important for businesses to have leadership roles that represent changing demographics. He said it has been proven that a more diverse workforce leads to bottomline success, adding that diversity drives innovation.
“As you think about selling products in a changing demographic, if you don’t have people in the room in leadership positions that reflect that demographic change, you will not sell as many products as you could,” Braswell said. “From a business perspective, it is incredibly important to truly understand and relate to that community.”
Braswell was also asked to share advice for any students in the audience that may be thinking about entrepreneurship.
“For anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur, you have to be solving a problem,” Braswell said. “You have to solve a problem that is worth being solved.”
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