We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Devika Brij. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Devika below.
Devika, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a former Sales Professional and People Leader turned Business Owner. I am the Founder of Brij the Gap Consulting and our mission is to partner with organizations to support, develop and increase retention of underrepresented and underserved professionals and the leaders who manage them. After working in corporate for several years in many roles including Marketing, HR and Sales (both in an individual contributor and people leader scope), I realized that my challenging experience trying to navigate and succeed within enterprise companies was not specific to just me. Helping form the Black inclusion and women groups across companies like Google and LinkedIn gave me line of sight into the self advocacy dilemma and unfair environments marginalized often find themselves in. In 2018, after just two months into my new role as a people manager at a hyper-growth start up, I decided to take a leap of faith and leave corporate to start Brij the Gap Consulting. The idea behind Brij the Gap was to hone in on the gift I had of helping people of color and women win in their careers through tangible and applicable tools and strategies. These same strategies helped me increase my salary 6X in less than 6 years and transform my career from an individual contributor to people manager in highly competitive environments like Google and LinkedIn. Brij the Gap offers a selection of resources including customized workshops, career development programs for all seniority levels and executive coaching. We focus on developing people of color and women while helping organizations increase retention of their top underrepresented talent. We also train and coach leaders of underrepresented employees to best support their direct reports through a culturally competent lens. Brij the Gap’s clients include Meta, Visa, Pinterest, Glassdoor, Converse, Lionsgate/Starz and many more.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
2018 was the most transformational year of my life that would catapult me into entrepreneurship in the most unexpected and aggressive way. I had just left a major social media company after nearly 5 years as a Sales professional. Despite several challenges around self advocating and asking for what I believed I deserved given the value I drove for my team and company, my career there was satisfying until the final year when I experienced working with a problematic leader. Ultimately, I decided to leave the environment that was no longer serving me. I was hired as a senior sales leader at a hyper growth e-commerce start up in Toronto, Canada which was ideal at the time. The pay was awesome, the people I worked with were great and there were plenty of opportunities to contribute my expertise in the field while growing professionally. However, day after day, I felt this nagging in my spirit to leave. Leave?! How? Why? This was what I worked for all of these years. I decided to follow my gut, even through the shame of knowing this didn’t make sense to anyone around me. I took a sabbatical of one year and in that time, volunteered to give marginalized professionals advice on how to elevate their careers. Like my time mentoring my peers at Google, LinkedIn and several start ups, I saw these professionals begin to finally achieve their career ambitions after years of no success. It dawned on me that I offered a formula for career advancement and development that my communities of color and women needed. I began building frameworks, methods, workshops and short-form programs and my first client, Meta (then Facebook) ended up rolling out my resources to their Black and Hispanic employees to develop and retain their top talent. Since then, Brij the Gap has partnered with several different companies including but not limited to Pinterest, Glassdoor, Visa, Converse, Morgan Stanley, Great Place to Work, Lionsgate and many more!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
We would be here all day if I included every story of developed resilience through unfair and discriminatory treatment; but, what I will say, is that if you are a marginalized person your experience in the professional environment is not specific to you, it’s our community’s problem. I have been told to not wear my hoop earrings to meetings (despite having the highest earnings from my clients), my job security threatened for minor mistakes, and several other unfair circumstances. However, I am a firm believer that God doesn’t give us anything we cannot handle and that overcoming challenging experiences gives us the ability to help pull others up who are experience the same thing. Yes, going through discriminatory issues as a person of color can be defeating, but I’m blessed to be in a place where I can teach other underrepresented professionals to handle matters better than I did. I’m blessed to teach people managers and executives who don’t understand the challenges of underrepresent individuals to lead with context, empathy and compassion.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brijthegapconsulting.com
- Instagram: @brijthegap, @devikabrij
- Linkedin: @devikabrij
Image Credits
Alexis Meschi