The Friday Nooner made its return today after a quick Black Friday break. In this episode, Vickie Gibbs—who serves as an advisor, coach and mentor in the Triangle startup community—joined Pete and Joe as a guest co-host. The three discussed the pros and cons of Google and Apple coming to the area, along with the upcoming SEC Championship game and the growing startup ecosystem in the Triangle.
Our featured guest is Kurt Merriweather, who is the head of product and partnerships at The Diversity Movement. The Raleigh-based company helps organizations advance their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Here are some highlights from the episode:
- Pete and Joe start off the show with notifications from StreamYard saying there is a problem with streaming to LinkedIn—sorry if this annoyed anyone! The pair also talked about the UNC Entrepreneurship Center panel that Joe spoke on last night at UNC’s Kenan Institute. He, along with the other featured speakers, talked about the impact of Google and Apple coming to the Triangle on the startup community.
- Vickie joins the pair to give her thoughts on the issue. Overall it’s a good thing, she said, with Google and Apple making the Triangle more attractive for executives to move here. But, a disadvantage is that it could limit the talent available to local startups. Vickie has over 20 years of experience working with entrepreneurial ventures, software, and technology companies, so she knows whereof she speaks.
- Kurt joined to explain that The Diversity Movement was born out of the multicultural marketing practice at Walk West, a marketing agency, where Kurt served as VP of Strategy and Transformation for a few years. He and the Diversity Movement team help organizations think about DEI as a business asset and implement it through educational plans and assessments. Kurt also mentioned that they’re building a technology suite to help organizations scale the impact of their DEI efforts. Since launching in 2020, The Diversity Movement has grown from nine to 90 clients and from three to 20 employees.
Watch the full episode on Facebook here. (Sorry, but the LinkedIn connection was down for this week’s show.)
Or on YouTube:
