The Forbes 2021 Next 1000 list, presented by Square, highlights 1,000 entrepreneurs announced each quarter in 250-person increments.
Janice Omadeke,34, is featured on the Forbes 250 list of entrepreneurs released in December 2021.These inspiring small business leaders, many from diverse and underrepresented communities, says Forbes magazine, are redefining the American dream and what it means to start and run a business in the new normal.
The Forbes 2021 Next 1000 list was developed by an expert panel of leading judges from all industries, who evaluate the semifinalists with Forbes editors. A variety of factors were considered, including revenue, total funding, company ownership, business model and impact, and personal story.
Making workplaces more inclusive
Janice Omadeke, whose parents moved to the U.S. from the Democratic Republic of Congo as a child, is working to make workplaces more inclusive through mentorship. She is the founder and CEO of The Mentor Method, a company that helps companies retain and develop the talents of their employees, using the proven power of mentoring. Based in the city of Austin, Texas, The Mentor Method was founded in 2016 as an antidote to the old corporate mentoring programs. For Janice Omadeke, who moved to Austin from Washington, D.C. in 2017, the Mentor Method was the solution to a problem she had faced trying to advance in her career. “ I have been through corporate mentorship programs that matched me based on external demographics, age, race, gender, but didn’t take into account my goals or what I wanted to do in the future. They weren’t engaging. The process was very confusing, there weren’t a lot of details about how to build a mentor relationship”, she said to soulcitizen.com.
When she was working as a manager at PwC (formerly Price Waterhouse Coopers), her employees expressed interest in a mentorship program, and she knew she had an opportunity to be the solution she needed herself. The result was a program that matched employees based on their responses to interest questionnaires that gauge not only career goals but also personality compatibility. The patent-pending algorithm removes the bias and focuses on career development through a data-driven approach to match mentors and mentees. To do so, Janice Omadeke created software that matches mentors and mentees through a double-blind algorithm that aims to close the equal opportunity gap in the workplace. In a double-blind study, neither the participants nor the experimenters know who is receiving special treatment. The patent-pending algorithm removes bias from the mentoring process, leverages potential compatibility to find matches, and then provides a customizable framework focused on professional development and matchmaking. It also identifies and maintains meaningful mentor-mentee relationships.
Democratizing career opportunities
Janice Omadeke told blacknews, “What really sets us apart is our focus on lasting relationships, because like any other meaningful relationship, whether it’s a friendship, a romantic relationship or a professional relationship, there has to be a connection between the two people to really learn from each other, get something out of it and maintain that level of commitment. Our algorithm understands the chemistry component and ensures that people are learning from industry leaders in the workplace.”
The Mentor Method thus aims to democratize career opportunities and enhance career development by leveraging its unique program and SaaS solution. The organization’s software helps forward-looking companies affordably connect diverse talent with mentors within their organization, so that diverse talent is more likely to succeed, stay and advance in their careers.
94th woman in the U.S. to raise over $1 million in venture capital.
Despite Covid, Janice Omadeke led The Mentor Method to 785% revenue growth in 2020. The Mentor Method’s clients include Deloitte, the U.S. Department of Education, and Chegg, a U.S. educational technology company based in Santa Clara, California. In 2021, Janice Omadeke became the 94th woman in the U.S. to raise more than $1 million in venture capital. As of December 2020, only 93 other black women had raised $1 million or more in venture capital. “I am floored that in 2021 the number is still so low, and I’m also amazed at how few people in the venture capital space are aware of that staggering number”, she said to bizjournals.com.
The Mentor Method’s investors include Draper Associates , Alumni Ventures Group, Chris Pacitti of Elsewhere Partners, MATH Venture Partners, Sorenson Impact Fund and Backstage Capital.
Mentoring Experience
Janice Omadeke, they explain, watched her father go through a mentoring program that led to a job in the private sector, which impacted the life trajectory of her entire family. She has seen firsthand how a great career-enhancing mentoring experience for one person, like her parents, can really open doors and change the life trajectory of an entire family or community.
Rich professional career
Janice Omadeke holds a Graduate Certificate in Strategic Management from Harvard University and a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from MIT. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with over 10 years of experience leading Fortune 500 companies and is a graduate of Longwood University in Virginia.
Prior to creating The Mentor Method, Janice Omadeke worked as a Creative Design Manager at PwC, where she created a scratch mentoring program. Prior to that, she was a Lead Graphic Designer at BAE systems in Virginia, a British defense and aerospace company. There, her responsibilities included program coordination between BAE’s senior industry executives and creative teams, resulting in increased traffic to the company’s website, increased participation in employee engagement activities, a threefold increase in the number of videos created for the industry, increased social media results, and increased traffic to high-level trade shows to reach key customers.
Janice Omadeke also served as “Lead Graphic Designer/Marketing Coordinator” at KS International LLC, where she provided creative direction and program management of the company’s branding structure, including branding guidelines, color palette, marketing materials, during her first year of tenure. As a result of this success, she was selected by the company’s CEO to lead all future rebranding projects. These were all completed on budget and resulted in a 30% increase in brand awareness with customers.
Top Performer Award
Prior to that, Janice Omadeke spent a year and a half as a Graphic Designer at Cassidy Turley (now DTZ), a global leader in commercial real estate services that provides occupants, tenants and investors around the world with a full range of real estate solutions. Janice Omadeke was awarded the “Top Performer Award” there in 2012 for her design skills, professionalism and dedication. There, she also ably managed several concurrent design programs, which were recognized by clients for their creative value, and also implemented $10.3 billion worth of successful programs for the Capital Markets division, earning her industry recognition.
Janice Omadeke is a board member of The Austin Forum on Technology & Society, a monthly community engagement event bringing together technology leaders, advocates and the public to learn more about important technology-related topics; a board member of HOBY Texas North, a nonprofit organization focused on youth leadership and community service.
Multiple awards and nominations
En 2021, Janice Omadeke won the Austin Best CEO Award in the category of Small private company.
The Mentor Method is a member of the Google for Startups program. Janice Omadeke was also nominated for the 2020 Austin Under 40 and was the recipient of DivInc’s Champion of Change Diversity Champion of the Year award for the City of Austin. In addition, Janice Omadeke’s company was a finalist in the 2018 Grace Hopper Annual Conference, a MassChallenge Texas Gold winner, a 50 on Fire winner for Austin and DC Inno, and was selected in 2017 for the Startup Grind World Expo. In addition, Black Enterprise recognizes Janice Omadeke as one of the top 5 black women in tech in DC. Janice Omadeke was a subject matter expert at the 2016 White House Summit on Creating Tomorrow’s Tech Workforce.
