Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dumebi Egbuna. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Dumebi, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

My brother and I are Nigerian immigrants of the Igbo tribe and we wanted to pay homage to our heritage. “Chezie,” the name of our company, is the Igbo word for “reflect.” We believe all companies need to do some internal reflections about the DEI efforts, in order to ensure that their intent matches the impact.

With the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020, we saw a lot of companies touting their diversity and inclusion practices, with many significantly increasing the amount of resources they poured into creating inclusive workplaces. However, even with these investments, a gap still exists. Underrepresented employees continue to struggle to show up as their authentic selves at work and still long to find their community within their organization. Chezie is on a mission to change that.

Dumebi, 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?

My name is Dumebi Egbuna and I am the Co-founder and CMO of Chezie, a platform that helps companies retain their diverse talent by building impactful employee resource groups. Our vision is to create the most inclusive and equitable workplaces on Earth.

I attended Emory University, where I received my degree in Business Administration, with a focus on Strategic Consulting and Marketing. Upon graduation, I began working at IBM within their enterprise sales organization. Being that tech is an industry that is dominated by white men, it was at that company where I found my passion for helping minorities succeed in spaces that have previously not been accessible to them, like higher education and corporate America. I know what it’s like to be the only Black woman at the table, and I have dedicated myself to helping people with similar backgrounds break down barriers.
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My brother and I founded Chezie in June of 2020 with a completely different idea than what we’re doing now. We wanted to create a platform where job-seekers could find out about the minority experience at a prospective company before they apply, coining it a “Glassdoor for minorities.” While we loved that idea, and still see a lot of potential in it, we struggled to scale.

About a year after launching the Glassdoor platform, we pivoted to focus on employee resource groups. We knew that we wanted to continue our work helping minorities find workplaces where they belong, and we both had experience leading ERGs at our respective organizations, so it was a natural transition. We’ve in the market with our ERG management platform for a little over a year and are working with some amazing companies like the NBA, Airtable, Chegg, and several others!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Our content! Even before our software was in the market, we were regularly putting out ERG related resources in order to establish ourselves as thought leaders in the space. We created an ERG toolkit that serves as a guide to launch and manage successful groups. We were also hosting monthly events on topics ranging from authentically celebrating heritage months, like Black History Month, to how allies can support the work of these communities. This content was, and continues to be, a huge lead generator for us, with 61% of our pipeline coming from folks who have interacted with our content in some way.

I think a piece of advice that I have for companies looking to break into a market is to make a piece of their “product” accessible, meaning that you deliver significant value to your customers without them having to put in a lot of resources or effort into it. In return you’ve cemented yourself in your customer’s minds as a subject-matter expert and have peaked their curiosity into the rest of your offering(s).

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

We’ve been bootstrapped to date, primarily getting our funding from grants and pitch competitions.

Our first source of funding came from the NPR How I Built This Fellowship. We won a $50k grant from a pitch competition at the end of the program. I remember my brother and I being so shocked that we actually won, because it was our first “big” influx of cash, but it was the push we needed to make a big pivot and land us where we are now.

In the last couple of years, we’ve received almost $300k in grant money, which is non-dilutive and has allowed us to build out our software and grow our team. Now that things have accelerated quite a bit, we are currently raising our pre-seed round. I’ll keep you all posted on how that goes!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chezie.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cheziehq/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dumebi-egbuna/

Image Credits
Nonnie Egbuna