After graduating from college, many alumni want to help their alma mater by connecting current students to post-graduate opportunities. However, Cohort 35 student Gabby Williams is creating opportunities for fellow students while still in college herself. Williams is currently serving as the Chief Marketing Officer of the HelpHer Foundation, whose mission is to empower Black women in the sports and technology industries. I was able to sit down with Gabby and learn a little more about her role at the HelpHer Foundation as well as how she balances HelpHer with being a highly involved college student.
Cohort 35’s Gabby Williams
I was first curious about the origins of the HelpHer Foundation. Gabby explained that the idea of HelpHer was born in November 2020 during a conversation between Gabby, her sister Sydni, and her cousin Nacomi about the barriers Black women face breaking into industries such as sports and technology. All three agreed that these industries needed more representation of Black women, and more importantly, they wanted to take action to achieve this goal. To quote Williams, “We need Black womens’ voices in these spaces, and we need them to stay in these spaces!”
The HelpHer Foundation Team
The HelpHer Foundation aims to increase the number of Black women in sports and technology through three main pillars: career development, community, and empowerment. To do so, they select a cohort of Black women every calendar year. Once admitted, HelpHer provides its students with resources such as resume reviews, mock interviews, and professional panels relevant to sports and technology. For example, HelpHer recently hosted a panel with two Black women professionals: one marketing analyst from the NBA and one university specialist from Google! Besides professional development, the HelpHer Foundation also provides a community of Black female leaders who are helping inspire one another to break down boundaries that women before them faced. “We want students to know that we got you, and the rest of the students got you as well,” explained Williams.
HelpHer’s Resume Review Panel Event
HelpHer’s first students were the result of hours of reaching out to personal connections and LinkedIn cold messaging. As a result, HelpHer now boasts 12 active students in their 2021 Cohort, and their 2022 Cohort applications are open now too! These women are from various colleges in the DMV area, but Williams hopes to eventually expand across the entire East Coast. Aside from student reach-out, as Chief Marketing Officer, Williams is specifically responsible for HelpHer’s website development and creating social media content for LinkedIn and Instagram. She meets with the team weekly and the three women lay out their agenda, previous weeks’ projects, and upcoming weeks’ tasks. With this level of organization, it’s easy to see how Williams fits right in on any QUEST team.
HelpHer Foundation’s Services
When asked how she manages her role on this start-up and her life here at UMD, Williams stressed the importance of time management, passion, and saying no to opportunities. “It’s okay to not do everything under the sun,” explained Williams. “You should choose what you’re passionate about and really focus in on that. If you’re not passionate, when another opportunity comes along, you’ll want to pay more attention to that.” She also explained how the HelpHer Team aims to keep meetings to a minimum length. “We’re family, so it’s easy to want to chat for an entirety of a meeting, but we set five minutes at the beginning of a meeting to catch up. Then we use a Google Table, which is basically like a Gantt Chart, to prioritize what we’re working on that week. I credit QUEST for teaching me how to run a meeting like this – it has definitely saved me so much time in the long run!” Finally, when asked to give advice for any other fellow college students looking to start their own company, Willams highlighted leaning on your network. “What I’ve found is that nine times out of ten your network is there to help you. Utilize it!”
The entire QUEST community is so proud of Williams and her team for the launch and continued success of The HelpHer Foundation! If you’d like to learn more about the foundation, you can check out their website here, their LinkedIn here, or their Instagram here. Additionally, if you identify as a Black woman interested in sports or technology, apply for the 2022 HelpHer Cohort here!