As a junior athlete competing for Great Britain in 2011, Kike Oniwinde, 27, discovered the importance of persistence, ambition and commitment at a young age. Whether or not she knew it at the time, these were all traits that would prove extremely useful in her future career as the founder of the Black Young Professionals (BYP) Network, which has been colloquially described as “LinkedIn for black professionals”.

In 2016, Oniwinde set up the company to help black professionals connect with each other, as well as corporate organisations. The decision was extremely timely, due to a report released around the same time showing that black and Asian graduates were two and a half times as likely to be unemployed than their white peers. More than three years on, evidence shows racial bias in employment is widespread. In January 2019, the Guardian reported that black Britons and those of south Asian origin faced shocking discrimination at levels unchanged since the 1960s.

BYP Network aims to address such glaring inequalities by connecting professionals for mentorship, collaboration and to share job opportunities.

Oniwinde grew up in east London and excelled at school. She studied at university while also competing as a javelin thrower. Her abilities led to a track and field scholarship at the University of Florida but while there, her interest in the business world took her in other directions. “[In the US] I met exceptional black students and professionals, like those that I met in London,” she says. “I just thought that there were a lot of us and we need to connect on a global scale, yet there isn’t really a way to do that. ”

Back in the UK, Oniwinde soon had support from the black community, as well as investors and corporate partners who supported BYP Network’s mission. The next stage was to create an app. “I knew that tech was the future and that it can be scaled quickly. However, as someone who was not originally from [a tech background], I didn’t really know how to make the app. Or how to even be in this industry of startups and entrepreneurship.” After learning more about the inner workings of the tech industry, and app-building in particular, she raised some early funding and drummed up more support for the company. This eventually led to the creation of the app, which was built entirely in-house and launched last year.

BYP Network has 40,000 members but Oniwinde is aiming for 500,000. She says: “To me, it feels like we’re only getting started. We had a lot of offline activity too, including our annual leadership conference, which 800 people attended last year. The next one will be held in St Paul’s Cathedral.”

Oniwinde’s venture is thriving at a time when tech companies are falling short on racial diversity. For example, LinkedIn, which BYP Network has been compared to, was last year accused of fostering an environment that can subject people of colour to implicit bias from recruiters. The Drum reported that Kameshia Washington, a US-based marketing and project manager, conducted an experiment to expose such biases. Washington applied for jobs using her details and then applied for the same roles using her white fiance’s name and picture. She received four responses to 30 applications, while her fiance received 21, which she suggested reflected racial and gender bias in the corporate world. LinkedIn told the Drum that “employment discrimination is not tolerated on LinkedIn and is something we take very seriously”.

Oniwinde agrees that there is still considerable racial bias in general hiring practices – and it doesn’t receive enough attention. “There’s a lot of information on gender and how long it’s going to take to close the pay gap but there isn’t much on race.” She says BYP Network works with many companies, including Sky and Deloitte, which want to engage with the black community and ensure members are heard and seen.

Companies often reach out to BYP Network so that they can post positions directly on its jobs board. This is powerful, says Oniwinde, because it shows potential applicants that the company is actually looking for people like them and is committed to diversifying its workforce. Oniwinde explains: “People may feel like they don’t belong … and feel glad just to get any job. We make them see that, actually, maybe you are overqualified for that role, or that yes, you do deserve that promotion.”

BYP Network raised £150,000 in pre-seed funding earlier last year from angel investors that approached the company, and while Oniwinde is aware that black female founders get turned down more often for funding, she doesn’t dwell too much on the issue. “We’re more focused on just building the business and getting the name out there. And ensuring that we’re in the right places, so much so that investors can see the business opportunity.”

Although there has been an abundance of support, Oniwinde has also faced criticism. Some social media users have called BYP Network racist or compared it to apartheid. “Our existence is no different to women’s networks or companies such as Stonewall that cater to marginalised groups,” she counters. “We’re here for people to work with us and make change. We exist to stop organisations saying: ‘We can’t find the talent’. We can say to them: ‘Well actually, these people are right here in our network.’”

Almost a decade ago, Oniwinde says she was doing her AS-Levels and “thinking that I would become the best javelin thrower in the world”. Her career has taken a different path but she remains deeply driven and determined to break down barriers. “I’m inspired by the amount of opportunity out there,” she adds. “It breaks my heart that my community doesn’t always get those opportunities. But in a decade’s time, things should look so different. I’m inspired by the fact that we can create the world we want, if we truly believe it.”