CANCELED: Business innovator Stephanie Lampkin to discuss leadership, diversity and technology Feb. 22

Graphic courtesy of: Cutler Scholars ProgramStephanie Lampkin will visit campus Feb. 22-23

This event has been canceled.

Stephanie Lampkin, TEDx speaker and former downhill ski racer, will deliver her keynote speech titled, “Control Your Identity, Control Your Destiny,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 22, in the Walter Hall Rotunda.

She also will participate in a roundtable discussion at 9 a.m. Friday, Sept. 23 in Schoonover 450. To attend the roundtable, RSVP to cutlerscholars@ohio.edu.

Lampkin's visit is part of the Ohio Leadership Summit, which brings together scholars programs and leadership development programs to discuss the many different approaches to leadership that influence the essential characteristics of our community.

Named to MIT Tech Review’s list of 35 innovators under 35, Lampkin also has been featured by The Atlantic, Forbes, NPR and Fast Company. Her 14-year career in the tech industry has included founding two startups and working in technical roles at Lockheed, Microsoft and TripAdvisor.

At the age of 13, Lampkin learned to code. By the time she was 15, she was fluent in computer programming. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from MIT.

After college, Lampkin remembers being told her background wasn’t “technical enough” when applying for a position at a well-known tech firm in Silicon Valley. She ended up landing a position at Microsoft, where she would spend five years working in a technical position. She continued to wonder if her earlier job denial could have had something to with the fact that she is a black woman.

That experience motivated Lampkin to create a job matching tool called Blendoor, which removes the race and gender factor from the tech sector job hunt. It allows people searching for employment in the tech sector, to upload their resumes and then hides their name and photo from potential employers.

Lampkin says the idea is to avoid bias by removing gender and ethnicity from the equation. During her research, she found that, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study, a “white sounding” name can return as many job callbacks as an additional eight years of experience for someone with an “African-American sounding” name.

Lampkin’s visit is sponsored by the Cutler Scholars and co-sponsored by the Multicultural Center, OHIO Fellows, OMSAR, Margaret Boyd Scholars and the Women’s Center.