Leaving the world a better place than you found it is an honorable goal, but it’s not one that’s all that easy to achieve. But for Mandy Price, co-founder and CEO of Kanarys, those challenges couldn’t keep her from making much-needed changes that would allow for more diversity and inclusion at every level of business. Although she faced hurdles, she knew she wanted to change systems at a foundational level to make a world where her children could thrive, not just survive.
For years, Price was burdened with micro-aggressions, with people asking her if she was accepted into Harvard University “legitimately” and noticing that the Fortune 500 had more men named John as CEOs than total women CEOs. But even before graduating from Harvard or working in the legal industry, Price faced many similar challenges throughout her life.
Her experience from studious child to Harvard Law School graduate to attorney came with many life lessons, namely how to survive in spaces where women and people of color often weren’t earning promotions and new titles. She couldn’t help to notice an extremely visible problem: that one particular demographic was constantly rising in the ranks, while others always fell behind.
“I felt like so much of what we were doing was teaching folks these types of survival skills, as opposed to addressing things that we knew were wrong with the systems,” Price said. “Instead of teaching my children how to be successful in these systems, I wanted to really approach it from a different foundational level and say, ‘How do we start to really change the systems themselves?’”
When she worked in a law firm, Price helped out a lot with DEI initiatives and fell in love with data. These passions, later combined with the challenges she had to overcome as a woman of color in the law industry, would help shape Price’s own business, Kanarys, in the future.
It all began to fall into place when Price, while working with a new client, had a feeling that the client would question her work. So instead of using her normal document form to complete her work, Price spent additional time to receive a form from the firm’s head of corporate. As expected, the client pushed back on Price’s work, questioning the document and raising concerns — that is, until Price noted that the form came from head of corporate. The client almost instantly backtracked and was suddenly comfortable moving forward with the document at hand.
Price felt drained. But she had an idea. And even more than that, she had a passion for something that she knew was needed, especially if she wanted to build a better future for her own children.
That idea of building a better future for herself was not new to Price, nor was the commitment to societal change. Her own parents modeled dedication to public service when she was growing up, with her dad working as a fireman and her mom working as a counselor at the Salvation Army. At just around 10 years old, Price’s mother told her that she could build the life she wanted. Even at that young age, it clicked for Price that her actions could shape her life and the future.
Those sentiments were with Price even as she went to her husband, Bennie King, and said she wanted to quit her job. Not only that, but she wanted him to leave his job, too, so they could start a new company together that would help give a voice to those who had traditionally been silenced.
With two young children at home, taking the leap into entrepreneurship was scary. But Price never thought of it as building a startup. She saw the work in founding Kanarys, a company that offers data-driven analysis of a company’s efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and pinpoints actionable improvements, as something that was lacking but incredibly needed for businesses.
The company name is an homage to canaries, which were once used in coal mines to alert when toxic gasses were present to protect workers. Kanarys is meant to operate similarly, using data to find weaknesses in DEI efforts at a company to help the business change at a fundamental level through actionable, inclusive, and equitable improvements.
Starting Kanarys wasn’t easy. Price and King went nearly 3 years before they could take a salary. In the meantime, they emptied their retirement accounts and savings to make the dream work. Price’s own father became the company’s first investor, putting his own retirement savings into the company because he believed in what they were doing.
Price, King, and co-founder Star Carter didn’t let rejections from funders or prospective clients’ confusion over what the business was all about ever get in the way. Price expected it to be difficult, noting that while Black women founders are the fastest-growing segment of people going into entrepreneurship, they make up just 0.06% of venture funding recipients. It was all the more evidence as to why a company like Kanarys was so critical in the first place.
The Kanarys founders anticipated risk-related, prevention-based questioning when they were seeking funding. In response, they prepared presentations that would encourage promotion-based questions and allow them to share Kanarys’ true opportunities that they were so passionate about. Ultimately, this strategy worked.
Despite the difficulties, Kanarys has raised over $10.5 million, making Price one of fewer than 20 Black female founders with companies that have raised over $10 million. Most importantly, Kanarys is helping to make a difference at major companies, including businesses in the Fortune 500, and Price has built a life around her passions and desire to contribute to societal change.
“I’m pursuing my passion, I’m doing something that I absolutely love and I get so much meaning from, I feel like it’s the best thing in the world,” Price said. “I would encourage anyone else that has that entrepreneurial passion, that vision, to keep at it, that it’s not going to be easy, but you can absolutely do it.”