Karat DEI leader honored in Built In 2021 Moxie Awards

SEATTLE, April 29, 2021/ — Karat, the world’s leader in technical interviewing, today announced that Built In has named Portia Kibble Smith, head of DEI at Karat, as a 2021 Built In Moxie Awards winner. This year, the program recognized 50 outstanding women in tech who have made outsized contributions to their places of work, communities, and the industry as a whole. This year’s award is a celebration of Kibble Smith’s tireless work as a pioneering champion for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the tech industry.

Kibble Smith has committed her entire career to getting more Black people in tech and was instrumental in the launch of Brilliant Black Minds, Karat’s flagship purpose program. As Portia shared in the program launch story, “Brilliant Black Minds honors the heritage of genius and brilliance in the Black community.” The program offers participants free practice interviews, feedback, and professional development workshops to help remove barriers to the information, networks, and resources Black engineers need to ascend to the highest heights of tech.

“Portia has endless energy and expertise to help companies diversify their tech talent. She creates community everywhere she goes, speaks from her heart, and builds lasting, meaningful relationships,” said Jeffrey Spector, Karat president and co-founder. “Building a company with DEI at its core requires leaders who don’t accept the status quo and don’t take no for an answer, and Portia embodies both of those traits.”

By forging deep connections with leaders at prestigious institutions like Howard University and professional industry organizations like Jopwell, Kibble Smith dramatically increased the impact of the Brilliant Black Minds program and accelerated Karat’s commitment to delivering $1M in practice interviews to Black software engineers.

“Portia Kibble Smith has been an outstanding leader and role model,” said Dr. Legand Burge, Computer Science professor at Howard University. “She has been working tirelessly with our students and professors for the past year hosting workshops, coordinating amazing guest speakers, and connecting individually with students and professors on their needs. It has been an honor working with her.”

In addition to Brilliant Black Minds, Kibble Smith also established the Real Talk: Diversity in Tech forum to create a platform where women and underrepresented minorities can amplify their voices and share their stories. Real Talk has brought together diverse tech leaders from companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Indeed, Airbnb, and more.

Built In’s open call for nominations saw more than 400 applications this year. An esteemed panel of judges reviewed the nominations and chose the 50 women who they believe showed the most moxie — a combination of courage, determination, energy, and know-how. The winners of the 2021 award show outsized passion, achieve excellence in their respective fields, and lift up other women.

“These women raise the bar for what it means to be a rising leader in technology,” says Sheridan Orr, Chief Marketing Officer, Built In. “Their courage, determination, energy, and know-how will drive them to the pinnacle of their careers in tech, and motivate other women to do the same along the way.”

The Built In Moxie Awards program was eligible for individual contributors, managers, directors, and VPs who work in the technology industry. Moxie Award nominations were accepted for any person who identifies as a woman, whether through gender identity, gender expression, or sex.

You can learn more about all of the Built In 2021 Moxie Awards winners here.

About Karat
Karat unlocks opportunities for developers and tech-driven organizations by making every interview predictive, fair, and enjoyable. Karat conducts live technical interviews with a global network of professional Interview Engineers, enterprise-grade Interview Infrastructure, and unmatched data visibility and insights. Karat helps clients hire smarter and grow faster by unlocking productive engineering hours, improving the candidate experience, mitigating bias, and delivering a hiring signal that software engineering leaders trust.

About Built In
Built In’s mission is to connect the world through a shared passion for tech and the human need for purpose. The technology recruitment platform helps 1,800 customers of all sizes attract best-in-class talent to their technical roles of the future. Through content and digital recruitment solutions, Built In amplifies these companies’ brands, whether they want to be known as national, local or remote employers of choice, or leaders in DEI. The Built In Moxie Awards program recognizes up-and-coming women in tech and tech-adjacent roles who go above and beyond in their organizations and the industry as a whole. Monthly, 2.5 million tech professionals visit Built In to read our industry coverage, including trends and breaking news, and discover stories about companies with missions they want to join. The venture-backed platform has been included in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™ for two consecutive years and was included in the 2020 Inc. 5000 list. http://www.builtin.com