Rene Germain is a writer, speaker and champion of the Black community. She has worked at leading investment banks, professional services firms, and media companies.
In 2017, she created the Instagram account, 'Blk and Great', celebrating Black achievements and highlighting issues within the community. She co-created the viral hashtag #blackintheoffice to enable Black British employees to anonymously share their experiences of racism and discrimination in UK workplaces, prompting apologies from well-known organisations and contributions from Black employees around the world.
Rene regularly contributes to and drives online conversations about the Black workplace experience and has written for several online publications which include Fortune.com, Stylist.co.uk, HuffPost UK, and Cosmopolitan UK.
Black and Great is the first guide to specifically address the unique challenges many Black people face in the workplace. The book will share the career journeys of more than 20 successful Black British professionals and entrepreneurs from TV and film, sport, media, law, medicine, and finance through open letters and interviews. Providing advice to Black students and professionals, it will address topics such as overcoming imposter syndrome, mentorships, wider community outreach, personal branding, and salary negotiation.
Rene said:
“I started working on Black and Great four years ago in response to the lack of career guidance that focused on the unique Black workplace experience and therefore it meant that many Black students weren’t prepared to join workplaces where they were massively underrepresented.
“In creating Black and Great, I want to ensure that Black people, regardless of the career path they pursue, have access to career guidance and the ‘real’ Black workplace experience across different industries.
“Most career books provide ‘one size fits all’ advice and are very much devoid of the challenges Black employees face. The research shows that Black employees are paid less than their counterparts, are less likely to be promoted, and are less likely to have mentors and sponsors.”
The book features contributors such as Sir Steven McQueen CBE, Beverley Knight MBE, Trevor Nelson MBE, Alexandra Burke, Kayode Ewumi, Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE, and Dr Patricia Daley, a past Loughborough academic and the first Black female to be appointed as a lecturer at the University of Oxford.Two Loughborough alumni, Dr Nira Chamberlain OBE and Alice Dearing also contributed to the book.
Black and Great: The workplace toolkit, a careers book for Black students and professionals can be preordered.