Interview, Fireside Chat
Charles Phillips, Co-Chair of the Black Economic Alliance and Co-Founder of Recognize
- Charles Phillips, co-founder of Recognize and former CEO of Infor, attributes his confidence in competing with anyone to deep preparation, likening technical proficiency to shooting 10,000 free throws to succeed in a high-stakes game.
- Phillips' entry into STEM began at age 15 at a hobbyist shop where he built his first computer within 30 days and wrote his first application within the next 30 days, leading him to pursue computer science at the Air Force Academy and later join the Marines during the early development of ARPANET.
- To navigate the challenge of being the only Black professional in most rooms throughout his career, Phillips followed his father's advice to select measurable fields like law, finance, or computer science where performance is objectively quantifiable and rules are binary.
- Following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent demand for racial equity action, Phillips and fellow CEOs Ken Chenault and Ken Frazier launched "110," a private initiative designed to create one million jobs for Black people.
- The 110 program functions as an accreditation and authentication engine that aggregates thousands of nonprofit job training organizations into a single network, removing friction for corporate hiring managers.
- The initiative secured commitments from approximately 40 companies to hire 300 to 500 Black people annually, generating a projected $100 million annual fund over 10 years to support these hiring efforts.
- 110 has expanded its model to include partnerships with the National Association of Manufacturers to reach small businesses and private equity firms to leverage their portfolios for scaled recruitment.
- Phillips explicitly emphasized that the 110 program must retain the specific identifier "Black" rather than using broader terms like "people of color" to ensure the initiative remains targeted and effective.
- Goldman Sachs' "One Million Black Women" initiative, comprising $10 billion in direct investment and $100 million in philanthropic capital, was praised as a critical starting point given that Black women lead 34% of Black entrepreneurship growth annually.
- Significant barriers to Black women's economic mobility include a 90% wealth gap compared to white households and a lack of accessible childcare, which prevents approximately 30% of Black women from working.
- Homeownership rates for Black households have stagnated at 41% since 1968, compared to 68-70% for white households, severely hindering the ability to borrow against equity to start businesses or build intergenerational wealth.
- Phillips identifies increasing homeownership as a primary economic lever, suggesting solutions such as reducing down payments and implementing "rent-to-own" models to address market gaps in low-price neighborhoods.
- Recognize made a strategic bet in 2010 to run all enterprise applications on the AWS cloud platform, becoming one of AWS's largest customers with over 77 million subscribers.
- Phillips predicts a future where enterprise computing shifts away from vertical integration toward reliance on specialized third-party cloud providers, analogous to how businesses rely on utility companies for electricity rather than generating their own power.
- The primary driver for rapid cloud adoption is the accelerating pace of technological change, which outstrips the capacity of most companies to hire and retain sufficient internal technologists to maintain legacy systems.