Stephanie Lampkin

Mar 12

Founder and CEO of Blendoor

This may be one of the coolest concepts I’ve written about for Women’s History Month. It’s been well documented that bias exists in hiring practices, preventing candidates from being invited for introductory interviews based on their race and gender. Despite this being a well-known problem, unfortunately, most companies don’t go far enough to make access to opportunities more equal or realize the unconscious biases that persist in the workplace.

When I was in my early to mid-20s, I actually had two versions of my resume posted on Monster.com. One with the name Vanessa and the other with the name Michael. Believe it or not, Michael got more interest than Vanessa did, especially for programming and technical analyst positions.

And one of my first jobs as a 16-year-old was with a computer store. I was supposed to help the team build and repair computers but ended up being stuck at the customer service desk. When I finally pushed to get moved to the role I was hired for, I was told it wasn’t going to work out because it would make the guys uncomfortable. Needless to say, everyone else in that department was male.

Enter Stephanie Lampkin, Founder and CEO of Blendoor. Her recruiting app hides applicants’ information like photos and names to combat discrimination. Stephanie was motivated to change the game when she herself faced discrimination, being rejected for a position with Google after eight rounds of interviews for not being “technical” enough despite having graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford, spending 5 years at Microsoft, and earning a business degree from MIT.

Stephanie has come a long way from where she started, growing up on welfare. But she’s always had the tech bug and the smarts to match, learning to code software at the age of 13. She credits her aunt with her passion for computer science. Her Aunt, Greta, got her into Black Data Processing Associates, a summer coding camp that enabled her to become a full-stack developer, earning AP Computer Science classes in high school. Stephanie shared more, stating that these summer coding camps would culminate in big hackathons which were all-day programming contests with kids from around the country.

Blendoor now serves hundreds of companies that are focused on diversity and inclusion. Stephanie now sets her sights even higher on how she can affect positive change in the world through a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that will connect a marketplace of talent from diverse backgrounds with employers by integrating with a company’s applicant tracking system directly and eventually scale beyond hiring to eliminate discrimination in travel, dating, medicine, and beyond.

Powerful Quotes by a Powerful Woman

“My guiding idea is that talent and genius are evenly distributed, opportunity is not.”

“I fear that there are many people in this world (including myself) who may never be able to reach their full potential, due to poverty, homophobia, sexism, racism, and many other isms.”

“Microsoft was one of the first places where I saw that it was less about the color of my skin, and more about my gender. I would see African American male managers moving up within the company, but I was being overlooked. Ultimately I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to climb the ladder without getting the same level of mentorship that I saw other peers getting. Instead of staying, I decided to further my education and get an MBA.”