Expanding Opportunity in Tech: Lessons from Silicon Valley

By Nicholas Earle Brathwaite

When I moved to Silicon Valley in 1986 to work at Intel, I was the only Black person in my unit. Today, the valley looks very different.

Last year, I had the honor of receiving a Culture Shift Labs Award and spoke on my personal journey. As we recognize Black History Month, I’ve been revisiting lessons that still feel urgently relevant today and wanted to share a few reflections.

As I mentioned, Silicon Valley was not a flourishing place for Black people in the 1980s at companies like Intel, nor at industry conferences where I was often the only Black person in the room. Nearly 40 years later, the Valley has advanced in many ways – but it should not take another 38 years to make the same progress for Black professionals and other underrepresented groups in tech and beyond.

Later in my career, Flex CEO Michael E Marks made what many considered a bold choice: he selected a 30-ish Black technologist to become the CTO of Flex. To our knowledge, that decision made me the first Black CTO of a publicly traded company. Over the next several years, our leadership team helped transform Flex from a $150M contract manufacturer into a $30B global company with operations in ~30 countries and ~240K employees, co‑developing several iconic products alongside our customers.

But we didn't just transform Flex, our team transformed an entire industry.

Michael could have taken the conventional path and “recycled” someone who'd already held the title. Instead, he chose to bet on potential and talent. That single decision changed the trajectory of my life and career, reshaped a global business, and led to a partnership that has now extended throughout our careers, including later co‑founding Celesta Capital.

The core lesson I carry from that experience is this: talent and intellect are equally distributed; opportunity is not. If we only search for leaders who “have done it before,” we will miss the people who can do it next, and perhaps redefine what great leadership looks like.

Too often, Black leaders and other underrepresented founders and executives are evaluated primarily on titles they were never given the chance to hold.

During Black History Month, my ask of fellow executives, investors, and board members is this:

▶️ Expand your focus beyond familiar titles and résumés when making a hiring or investment decision.

▶️ Spend real time evaluating and getting to know an underrepresented talent and understand their capabilities.

▶️ Help someone build the networks and access they need to break through.

That is how we shift culture, not just in the Valley, but across corporate America. The opportunities aren’t grand and sweeping. They’re incremental and in front of us everyday.

I remain deeply grateful to Culture Shift Labs, Andrea Hoffman, David Parker, Lo Toney, and the broader community for their ongoing work to connect capital, opportunity, and diverse leadership. And I hope that, over time, stories like mine become the norm, not the exception.