Nine years ago, Cam Snaith and I launched Bleeker with the mission to put underrepresented talent in the driver's seat of their careers and cultivate a talent community that would nurture and propel people even further.
Nearly a decade in, we've seen enormous progress from where we started with a vibrant Collective of 1,600+ members, a strong internal team dedicated to our mission, and a collection of world-class resources available to the Bleeker community to help achieve our collective and individual goals.
Nearly a decade in, we've seen enormous progress from where we started with a vibrant Collective of 1,600+ members, a strong internal team dedicated to our mission, and a collection of world-class resources available to the Bleeker community to help achieve our collective and individual goals.
In light of our ninth anniversary, let’s take a moment to examine just how far Bleeker has come.
Taking diversity, equity, & inclusion into our own hands.
As the co-founders of Bleeker, Cam and I met as high school students in Ontario, bonding over basketball and the drive to achieve. After we each graduated from Princeton, we began climbing the corporate ladder and worked in multinational corporations, where we quickly became frustrated by the number of extraordinary people we encountered toiling away at ordinary jobs due to added challenges facing underrepresented talent.
This dissatisfaction with the status quo fueled our belief in building careers and workplaces that empower all. Unlike our high school days, we knew faith in hard work and degrees wasn't enough. Creating a new type of career-building company with resources and cultural competency to fully support underrepresented talent would be crucial to realizing their idea.
Out of this shared motivation, Bleeker was born.
Fostering a trusted community of underrepresented talent.
Over the next few years, we collaborated with Angie McArthur and David Peck from Professional Thinking Partners (PTP) to initially support a cohort of Bleeker Fellows in 2015 with individual coaching and a group workshop. Impressed by their methodology, professionalism, and shared perspective on the future of work, the collaboration evolved into a partnership in 2018 and a merger in 2019.
With a talent community of over 1,600 members, plus intellectual property, coaching, and training assistance, our original vision for Bleeker (putting underrepresented talent in the driver’s seat of their careers) manifested more powerfully than ever before.
We’ve come a long way, but we’re just getting started.
Today, our work could not be more timely. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated socioeconomic inequities that historically marginalized groups experience at every stage of their professional lives.
We find ourselves at the center of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconstruct how we approach workplace culture and careers. We've responded to the challenge by building more equitable and accessible career support systems, enhancing our external partnerships, and growing the company's financial health. Now, more than ever, we're focused on innovative ways to realize our mission and have a more significant impact than ever before.
We encourage you to contribute your perspective to the Collective and bring along someone new who might benefit from our resources. Bleeker's Collective is always open to all, with an eye toward improving both opportunities and outcomes for people of color and other underrepresented communities in particular.
So thank you for joining us on this amazing journey. We've come a long way, but we know we're just getting started.
