From left, Lisa Gelobter, CEO and co-founder of tEQuitable, and Tekedra Mawakana, chief operating officer of Waymo, at Leading Women Defined "Tech Femme Supremacy: The Intersection of Innovation and Advocacy" on Feb. 11 at Blackbird House in Culver City, California. Photo: Stephanie Macris

Former BET Networks general counsel and CEO Debra Lee recently hosted a fireside chat between Tekedra Mawakana, Waymo LLC chief operating officer, and Lisa Gelobter, tEQuitable Inc. CEO and co-founder, to highlight the investing power women of color have.

Mawakana, who started her career at Steptoe & Johnson like Lee, discussed parlaying her lawyerly experiences into venture capital with Gelobter, who worked alongside Lee at BET as chief digital officer. "Tech Femme Supremacy: The Intersection of Innovation and Advocacy" was sponsored by Lee's organization, Leading Women Defined, which defines itself as a "gathering of prominent African American women and their allies as they engage in dialogue focused on actionable solutions to positively impact the community and create equal opportunities for women."

As the first public-facing Leading Women Defined event in the Los Angeles area, the organization invited 100 prominent black women in multiple fields interested in polishing their investment portfolios. The event took place at the three-month-old Blackbird House, a co-working space for women of color and their allies in Culver City on Feb. 11.

"It's all about women empowerment and making sure women of color have the opportunities that other women and men have," Lee said. "When black women get together—and our allies whether they're men, women or other folks—it's just really magical."

Lee, who joined Black Entertainment Television in 1986, held the titles of chief operating officer and general counsel before being tapped to be chairman and CEO in 2006. She was the executive vice president and general counsel in 1991 when BET became the first African American-owned public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. She retired in 2018.

Debra Lee, Leading Women Defined founder. Photo: Stephanie Macris

In 2009, Lee founded Leading Women Defined. She currently sits on the boards of AT&T Inc. and Marriott International Inc.

Mawakana began her legal career at Steptoe in Washington, D.C., focusing on intellectual property and telecommunications. She said there she kept hearing about Lee's in-house success at BET.

"While I was at Steptoe, there were these legendary women who were discussed all the time, and Debbie Lee was one of them," Mawakana said. "They said women have done very well here. Women actually have gone part-time and still made partner. I never wanted to make partner, but I wanted to be in a place where I can be myself—whatever that meant. I didn't have an idea at the time how challenging that was going to be."

After Steptoe, Mawakana applied her Big Law expertise to an in-house career in big tech, first managing corporate transactions in a three-person legal department at an e-commerce startup. Staying in the Capital Region, this led to an opportunity at AOL. She spent 13 years there, serving as an assistant general counsel then as chief counsel and deputy general counsel for the public policy department amid its 2009 spin off from Time Warner. She would later take on a similar role at Yahoo Inc. with her next role at eBay Inc. being the catalyst for her to move to Silicon Valley. She's now at Waymo, the Alphabet Inc. self-driving technology company where she was promoted to chief operating officer last September.

For the first 18 months at Waymo, Mawakana said she was the only woman in leadership. During the job interviews and the first leadership team meeting, she said the issue never came up.

"I'm like, 'Huh, nobody even thought to mention it.' I knew I would be the only black one, but I didn't think I would be the only woman there," she said. "I say that as we talk about the experiences of how to support women, how to invest in women. In those spaces is actually where I think the most about the need for me to figure out how to leverage these experiences beyond my experiences."

A co-founder and a former chairman of the Internet Association, Mawakana is now a limited partner with the Operator Collective, which boasts 15 female chief operating officers among other big tech founders and investors from diverse backgrounds largely overlooked in venture capital.

At first, she said, she would act as an angel investor for friends' projects but didn't properly evaluate her investments. But over the last year, she said she asked herself how to become a better investor in companies poised to have a social impact and learned to make more sophisticated investment decisions.

Approached by founder Mallun Yen, Mawakana joined the collective last year as a limited partner, meaning she doesn't make fund management decisions, unlike a general partner who contributes to those decisions. Instead, she provides the capital and understands its trajectory. She meets the people behind the companies she's invested in and can serve in an advisory role.

"When [Yen] called me to talk about it, she said everything I just said. She said, 'You know what? Women and people of color are being overlooked in the venture world.' And I'm like, check. She's like, 'You don't have time to [do due] diligence [on] companies.' Check. She's like, 'And it's the same group of people that founders and co-founders keep going to for their board members, their advisory boards, their investors. When that founder is looking for a CEO, that's who they go to. They go to these people who have been advising.'

"She said, 'So I'm starting a fund, specifically focused on the unsung heroes, which is operators in tech. You're the people that scale businesses, you're the people that bring products to markets, you're the people who created the code to make the internet move and no one's actually tapping into this talent.'"

With in-house experience at three original Silicon Valley startups, Mawakana said it shows she's a "super risk-averse human being."

Over the years, Lee said Leading Women Defined events took place in D.C. and Miami, and she is looking to set up more programming due to demand.