Apple Music marketing exec Bozoma Saint John talks diversity in new interview
Bozoma Saint John, global marketing executive for Apple Music and iTunes, took part in a brief interview as part of Fortune's Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference on Tuesday, offering those in attendance a lesson in self-confidence she learned as a teenager.
Speaking to Fortune, Saint John recalled how at the age of about 13 she emigrated from Ghana to Colorado Springs, Colo., with her parents and three younger sisters. The life changing experience forced her to embrace who she was, a realization that helped pave a road for success, first at Pepsi, then Beats and now at Apple.
Saint John said her stature (she was about the same height at 13 as she is now) and skin color effectively deflated any attempt to fit in among her peers. This ultimately turned out to be a blessing, however.
"I couldn't hide, there wasn't a choice to do that," Saint John said. "So the choice was do you try to do what everybody else was doing? I couldn't be blond, I couldn't be white. [...] I just couldn't be anything else, and so it meant that I had to become just all of everything that I have."
The lesson was an important one for Saint John, who bears her diverse background as a virtue, not a hinderance.
"Because at 13, I learned what it meant to walk into a room and not care when everybody else turned around and looked at you. And here I am," she said.
The message echoes an Apple initiative to celebrate diversity among its employees by creating an all-inclusive workplace. According to a recent EEO-1 filing, the company has a long way to go for its upper echelons reach an equilibrium between white males and underrepresented minorities -- at least by government measures -- but progress is being made.
Known to friends as "Boz," Saint John became part of the Apple team when the company purchased Beats Music in 2014. Initially a behind-the-scenes operator, Saint John recently came to the fore thanks to a memorable onstage presentation at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The executive has since become a corporate ambassador of sorts for Apple Music, and even found herself in an Apple Music ad alongside SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine and James Corden.
Speaking to Fortune, Saint John recalled how at the age of about 13 she emigrated from Ghana to Colorado Springs, Colo., with her parents and three younger sisters. The life changing experience forced her to embrace who she was, a realization that helped pave a road for success, first at Pepsi, then Beats and now at Apple.
Saint John said her stature (she was about the same height at 13 as she is now) and skin color effectively deflated any attempt to fit in among her peers. This ultimately turned out to be a blessing, however.
"I couldn't hide, there wasn't a choice to do that," Saint John said. "So the choice was do you try to do what everybody else was doing? I couldn't be blond, I couldn't be white. [...] I just couldn't be anything else, and so it meant that I had to become just all of everything that I have."
The lesson was an important one for Saint John, who bears her diverse background as a virtue, not a hinderance.
"Because at 13, I learned what it meant to walk into a room and not care when everybody else turned around and looked at you. And here I am," she said.
The message echoes an Apple initiative to celebrate diversity among its employees by creating an all-inclusive workplace. According to a recent EEO-1 filing, the company has a long way to go for its upper echelons reach an equilibrium between white males and underrepresented minorities -- at least by government measures -- but progress is being made.
Known to friends as "Boz," Saint John became part of the Apple team when the company purchased Beats Music in 2014. Initially a behind-the-scenes operator, Saint John recently came to the fore thanks to a memorable onstage presentation at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The executive has since become a corporate ambassador of sorts for Apple Music, and even found herself in an Apple Music ad alongside SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, Jimmy Iovine and James Corden.
Comments
come on, man.
Im sure she's a breath of fresh air st Apple. And not because of her ethnicity. Because she's an amazing human being. look up her life. A genuinely good person in a world full of fakes, liars, and wolves.
I hope she is blessed much in her career and her life.
Seems youre in quite a pickle....
She's global marketing executive for Apple Music and iTunes.
APPLE MUSIC AND ITUNES marketing. MARKETING *for* those SERVICES.
A marketing position is required for certain tech-related services. That run on technology. Apple technology.
Hope that clears things up.
Seriously, I'm no fan and was a bit put off by parts of her demo at wwdc but I think she, as anyone would, deserves better than this.
In ADDITION to the tech side, Apple has a little* Fortune 100 operation called Services (i.e. iTunes essentially.)
* I didn't check but IIRC Services is significantly bigger than the Mac business and is growing while Mac is shrinking.
The very assertion implies that they weren't just a box manufacturer, but transported a cultural element, some sort of spirit - which, of course, they always have.
I think you *do* get it; you're just pining for the old days when Apple was the underdog, rather than defining the mainstream.
I got news for you. The counterculture in part grew out of the civil rights movement. It was never "neutral" on what we now call diversity. A little backward on gender equality on a conceptual level, maybe. But there was at least one woman on the original Macintosh project, for example.
And like Quadra says, her technology is in music marketing. Get itt?
I have ZERO knowledge or information on this woman save for one instance...she got to speak at an Apple event. The person I saw speak did not sound like an executive. She sounded like some dope they grabbed out of a shopping mall and shove out on stage. So with that being my only basis for evaluation, and the fact that I know Apple is forcing diversity into as many token positions as possible...I can't take her seriously at all.
I'm not speaking from some malicious position. I'm just calling it as it is. She is a black African immigrant woman, holding a top executive position at a US company. She got that job because either 1) out of every imaginable candidate she was the right one to head up Apple Music, or 2) because she's a black African immigrant woman and that ticks a ton of diversity boxes in one shot for Apple.
Which do you think is more likely in today's climate?
Which do you think is more likely after having heard her speak?