Social Equity Lab – Townrootz

The Town Experience – Charlese Banks

#059 – Today we talk to Charlese Banks, the creator and founder of The Town Experience, a platform that highlights the cultural events and as we call ’em, the town experiences that happen around the city. She is hyper-focused on featuring local businesses, specifically black and brown businesses – letting the public know about grand openings and celebrations.

Charlese took a platform from one event and turned it into a business. The inspiration of the platform came about when Afrotech, a conference for Black tech workers, came to Oakland. Charlese was inspired to build around that weekend’s activities so that visitors could connect to locals and figure out how to do things that were outside of the conference and be able to take in the entire Oakland experience.

Charlese knows that Oakland is an experiential city. People come here on vacation or a visit for some other reason and Oakland touches them. Next thing you know, within a year they move here.

“everything about the city that makes it great – it is not something tangible. You have to come here to experience the city to get why people don’t leave and why we choose to stay here.”

Charlese’s goal was to build a platform for visitors, but was surprised that the data showed most of her followers were locals who were not tapped into what’s going on around the city. This was the interesting twist – she set out to develop an app for visitors, she ended up developing one for locals.

“A lot of the feedback I get – they’re like, I love it because I’m finding all kinds of things that I don’t necessarily see promoted in Oakland on your platform.”

“So that was the surprising pivot – I was trying to figure out how to make this a platform appeal to people that weren’t from here and then turned out the market I needed to tap in was the localized market first because we weren’t actually taking advantage of our backyard.”

Be sure to listen to the whole interview to hear about how Charlese’s key partnerships with companies like AirBNB and Visit Oakland have grown her business.

Links

Instagram

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode

[0:56] Town Experience is a platform that highlights all around the city
[1:23] We had the major conference come to town
[7:30] Afrotech conference is highlighting Black tech workers
[9:58] It started as an event planning idea
[10:54] This is a destination marketing strategy
[16:37] The surprising pivot
[20:30] Everything about the city that makes it great is not something tangible
[21:25] Something about Oakland touched them. Next thing you know, within a year they moved

Social Equity Lab – Melanie Graham

#058 – Today we talk to Melanie Graham, Founder & CEO of Social Equity Lab, an Oakland based boutique consulting firm that focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion, also on organizational development for nonprofits, corporate companies, startups, and governmental agencies – though Melanie says large nonprofits are the sweet spot.

Indicators that you need her are low morale, high turnover, and difficulty in recruiting. She loves to focus on the organizational structure to make a lasting impact. You can do all the training in the world, but you must change the structures that allow the inequities to exist in the first place.

“looking at structures like, performance management systems or just like the hiring and recruiting process, just things that are very structural – I like to impact those because it’ll really shift the culture of the organization. And frankly, it’s easier to do that than it is to change people. Behavior change can take a lifetime. If structures change, people will change along with it.”

Melanie started the business in New York, about 5 years ago. She moved to Oakland during the pandemic. A Seattle native, she was drawn to Oakland’s history of activism and mobilization.

Many would assume Melanie finds it easier to work with west coast or Bay Area clients, but that is not necessarily the case. Interestingly, she finds that people in other areas of the country are more open about where they are and more open about addressing the issues.

“organizations could be in a place where they think they’re doing it well and don’t think that they need this work or this support because, you know, listen, I’m from California.”

“working on the East coast might be a little bit more transparent with where they’re at.”

“I would say the clients that I have in the South – their willingness to address it is a little bit more present.”

Be sure to listen to the whole interview to hear Melanie talk about how DEI issues affect the bottom line.

Links

Website

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode

[0:57] Social Equity Lab is a boutique consulting firm
[2:01] I really customize the content so it makes sense
[4:44] It's easier to change structures people
[7:31] I find that the best data is really the qualitative data
[11:23] I think people's biggest fear is that they just don't wanna come off racist
[12:41] I was excited to come to Oakland
[14:30] People in the West / California can be a little bit more defensive
[16:25] Clients in the south are more willing to address it
[21:20] More importantly, this impacts the bottom line
[25:57] Organizations or companies will have policies they don't enforce

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The Town Experience – Charlese Banks

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Social Equity Lab – Melanie Graham

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