Rene Germain
Author of 'Black and Great: The workplace toolkit, a careers book for Black students and professionals'
Rene studied BSc International Business at Loughborough University, graduating in 2016. She is a writer, speaker and champion of the Black community, and 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 shares 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 addresses topics such as overcoming imposter syndrome, mentorships, wider community outreach, personal branding and salary negotiation.
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.