One of the things we most love about our Trailblazer Community is the various ways we express ourselves through fashion. From bright blue hair to sleek, tailored suits, we embrace all expressions of personal style. The way we show up is a very powerful component of our nonverbal communication and a big indicator of how we value ourselves. So let's talk about it!
Join WIT DC, Rakia Finley, Founder of Copper & Vine and Salesforce MVP, and Tiffany Ingram, Career & Style Influencer and Founder of Policy & Fashion for a fun, informative conversation on personal branding. Please come to this event dressed in that outfit that makes you feel like a rockstar at work and be prepared to examine how you present your best self to the world.
Copper & Vine
Managing Partner
Policy & Fashion
Career and Style Influencer
Rakia Finley is an American software executive, Women in Tech Initiative Leader, full-stack developer, Salesforce MVP, private investor, and philanthropist. She is best known for her work with the Obama Administration on their "Girls in STEM" initiative and continues to develop innovative technology solutions and community initiatives that promote diversity in STEM for girls of color.
Named FemTech's 2016 & 2017 Powerful Woman Programmer, she is one of the highest-earning African-American females in the software industry and North America's first black female owner of a software and product development firm.
By 19, she was the founder of PinStripe Consulting, a database development firm. After delivering over 500 custom database solutions to Virginia and Washington, DC nonprofits, she launched Surge Assembly, a full-service software development firm focused on enhancing company revenues and resources. Her determination for better software-led her to build a custom solution for Starwood Hotels in 2006, making them on the first leading hotel, with virtual booking and room management.
Credited with creating a more realistic approach to data, innovation, business development, and solution-based engineering, Finley continues to revolutionize how organizations and businesses utilize technology as a resource for enhancing exceptional growth. Her client list includes; Apple, Coca-Cola Company, AstraZeneca, Kaiser Permanente, National Basketball Players Association, The NAACP, and The American Bar Association.
By 2010, Rakia had reinvented Surge Assembly with a focus on educating business leaders on active engineering and software development, with an underlying emphasis on inclusion, diversity, executive mindfulness, and removing bias. Finley has also emerged as an entrepreneur's dream come true, delivering products for founders that have received over $27 million in acquisition in as fast as six months. In 2015, Finley Co-Founded FIN Digital, a full-service senior-level development firm, building artificial intelligence, natural language processors, software, and hardware applications for over 300 founders and organizations. In 2018, Copper & Vine - a creative solutions agency in the business of reimagining - was formed as an augmentation of the FIN Digital work to blend Rakia's passions: architecting award-winning technologies, making companies that scale, and building brands the produce results.
Outside of managing her companies, Rakia continues to lead initiatives on workplace challenges for women of color in hopes of developing solutions for building more productive and inclusive workplaces.
Tiffany Ingram is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Drexel University and a K-12 education professional, working in Special Education Compliance for Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). Outside of work, she is Career and Style Influencer at PolicyandFashion.com where she shares career and fashion advice to inspire Millennial women to look fabulous in the workplace and on the weekend. She created Policy and Fashion out of a need to help young women decode the "unwritten" rules of the workplace and learn how to cultivate meaningful relationships to excel their careers. She works to motivate women of all shapes and sizes to be confident and stand in their power with style and grace.
