“I don’t want there to be a situation where when I clear the space from the seat that I have right now at Google. I don’t want to have been the only one. I hope that I’ve uplifted, I’ve coached, I’ve supported, I’ve mentored other people so that they have the opportunity to occupy the seats that I’ve had because they are so critical. They are so important. It’s a great responsibility, but I don’t want that to be the norm, this kind of culture of being the only one. I want to see more of us and I want to make sure that I’m doing my part to make sure that I’m not the only one.”

Being the only one is something Latoya Drake has grown accustomed to most of her life. 

“My familiarity with being the only one and being the only Black person in my classroom growing up,”  she shares. “By the time you get to college and grad school, you can count the people who look like you…you become so comfortable with being the only one.” 

She adds, “My biggest takeaway is that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Drake, who holds a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University and a Master’s from Georgetown University, is Google’s current head of media representation and one of the founding members of the Google News Initiative (GNI). She has been working to change that narrative not only for herself but for those who will come behind her. 

She represents less than 3% of women of color actively working in the tech industry, according to a 2023 survey from Accenture. It’s a number that’s even less marginalized when discussing one of the top tech names in the world.

“You step into a tech company [like Google] where we’ve all seen the numbers, and our representation is incredibly, incredibly small,” she tells RoyalTee from her New York City office. 

The drive to create change derives from a saying she traces back to an episode on the ‘90s sitcom, A Different World, in which Whoopi Goldberg told the students, “You’re a voice in this world, and you deserve to be heard.’’

“I never forgot that quote,” Drake recalls. “Whenever I’m experiencing any new kind of challenge, anytime I’m going through something I’ve never been through before, whether that’s being in a space where you feel like no one else looks like me – and that’s true for so many of us – I always say to myself, I’m a voice in this world. And quite frankly, I deserve to be heard.” 

It’s a mantra that’s carried her through her career at Google since joining the company in 2014 and has enabled her to champion monumental initiatives, including a unique and innovative outreach system to minority media outlets. In 2018, the GNI was launched to bridge a gap between technological innovation to newsrooms, specifically those of color. Drake noted that there’s a common misconception that Google is just a big search box, but there are trendy data and resources that businesses have yet to tap into, mostly because of a lack of education. GNI is set up to be that resource. 

“We thought really carefully and really smartly about the role that Google can play in helping people get the information that they need,” Drake explains  “, especially from a news perspective, and really thought deeply about how we really support the news industry as important storytellers, in terms of getting the right information to the right communities.”

Check out the full cover feature on Latoya in our 2023 Spring edition.

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