Our Story

As a first-generation immigrant and the first in my family to go to college, I believed firmly in meritocracy. Work hard, do good work, and you will advance. After all, isn’t this the American dream. Not to mention, as an introvert, the only thing scarier than networking is jumping off a cliff.

Enter Monster, LinkedIn, Indeed, Handshake and numerous other online job boards which made Easy Apply the norm. Then came the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to manage and filter through all those resumes. 

I hired many people during this time. The number of resumes that we got for any given role was overwhelming. I had no time to filter through them (sorry). The only ones I looked at were ones that made it through the ATS or HR machine (thanks HRBPs), or referrals.

Suddenly, in a world democratized by technology, having strong social capital reigned supreme. Living the American dream meant effectively building the networks to make that dream a reality.

After more than 2 decades working across for-profits and non-profits, I've seen the systemic barriers which hold women back from their potential. It's not an accident that while 50% of entry level workers are women, only 25% end up in the c-suite.

We founded ICareerCafe to be a place where we remove the barriers to accessing professional networks that can help jump start and accelerate careers for young women. We will be your someone who knows someone.