Ballerific Woman: Valeisha Butterfield Jones, Marketing and Communications Strategist, & Google Executive

– Blogged By @Climb_This_Hill

In a perfect world, men and women would receive equal pay. African American women would be presented the same opportunities as their white counterparts. Rejection would be based on qualifications rather than race.
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Unfortunately, this world is far from perfect, however, there are people, more specifically women, who have dedicated their time, money and education to make a positive change. They’ve used their experiences and their encounters with injustices to fight and/or create more opportunities for their children and their children’s children, in an effort to make the world a better place.
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They’ve put our pain and problems on their backs and created space for change, new opportunities for our brothers and sisters to excel and succeed in a world that is designed against us. This is #BlackExcellence. These are Ballerific Women.
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One of those special individuals is Ms. Valeisha Butterfield Jones.
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Earlier this year, Ms. Jones was appointed to a very coveted position as Google’s Global Head of Women and Black Community Engagement.
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Since working for Google as far back as 2016, Valeisha has continuously advocated for diversity in the technical world and has created ample opportunities to elevated women and people of color for leadership roles in her field.
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She has personally trained and mentored hundreds of inspiring techies, with one of her methods being her ‘Decoding Race Talk’ series, which focused heavily on educating Googlers on race, culture, and gender biases.
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Not only is she attempting to bring awareness and educate the many young black professionals around the world, but the leaders they aspire to be, that in many ways discriminate against them.
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“Education and awareness is key and we made tremendous progress at Google over the last two years. In my role, new programs will also be developed and scaled, so please stay tuned.”
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Though she has dedicated much of her time to uplifting her culture, Valeisha’s efforts don’t stop at Google.
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For the last decade she has served as the CEO of Women In Entertainment Network — a non profit organization that mentors and inspires women of all races in the entertainment business, all the while making it her mission to promote positive images of women in today’s society.
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Ms. Valeisha Jones is also a devoted mother, wife to NBA player, Dahntay Jones, and daughter to North Carolina’s Congressman, G.K. Butterfield.
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Humbly making a name for herself and being the role model that she is, Valeisha Butterfield Jones, really just wants to see a considerable change in the world of technical professionals, for both women and her black community.