There are zero black women leading Fortune 500 companies right now. Here's how company culture can be sculpted to change that.

• Business Insider spoke with three black female entrepreneurs, all of whom stressed that workplaces need to focus on inclusion just as much as they do diversity.
• Shelby Ivey Christie, former digital marketing and sales planner at Vogue, said companies need to make sure black voices are given equity in businesses, and that diversity means more than hiring a few black people to be on a team.
• Uber's Head of Strategy & Leadership Meena Harris, an entrepreneur and social activist, said hiring "one black person is not enough" in terms of companies creating a more inclusive working environment.
• Meanwhile, Mecca James-Williams, a stylist and senior style editor at The Zoe Report, said that without current laws instructing companies to stop discriminating, black workers "would be stiffed completely."
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The Fortune 500 doesn't have a single black female CEO.

For just six months, in 2019, Mary Winston was the sole black female CEO among Fortune 500 companies. She held the role on an interim basis before she was replaced by another white male.

In fact, only two black women have ever led Fortune 500 firms: Winston and former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, who became the first in history to do so upon her appointment in 2009. The Fortune 500 list was first published in 1955.

Business Insider talked to three black female entrepreneurs who said company cultures still need to shift to get to equitable representation for people of color in the workplace, let alone the C-suite. And while companies have started to acknowledge the need for more diversity, they are held back because they don't understand what inclusion means, they said. To sculpt a company culture that actually helps minoritized groups like black women reach leadership positions, diversity needs inclusion.

Shelby Ivey Christie, former Digital Marketing & Sales planner at Vogue, told Business Insider, "By numbers, we do need more. But also the inclusion piece is huge. The whole culture will have to shift to accommodate and address and be receptive to this new group of talent that did not exist in this space before."

"It's always going to be different for black people in corporate spaces," Christie added. "We always have to be two times as good. Four, five, six times as good. We have to be double-qualified over other candidates."

"We have leaders that grew up in the forties when segregation was legal"

In late 2018, the Center of Talent and Innovation released a"Being Black in Corporate America" report, which found that black people only account for 3.2% of senior leadership roles at large corporations, and hold just 0.8% of Fortune 500 CEO positions. The study also found that one reason many black people are having trouble rising up the corporate ranks is because of a lack of mentorship from and access to senior leaders.

"Being Black in Corporate America" also found that only 8% of white-collar professionals are black. As of 2019, there are currently more - 33 - female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than ever before. However, only four Fortune 500 CEOs are black, down from seven less than a decade ago, and none of them are women.

Meena Harris, Uber's head of Strategy & Leadership as well as an entrepreneur and social activist, noted that "black women and women of color often get lost" in the conversation over diversity.

"It's all too common that when we talk about diversity and inclusion, and gender equity in the workplace, it translates to just white women," Harris told Business Insider. "This is the whole point of intersectionality, that it cannot only be a single-issue analysis of race and gender, and instead must consider the cumulative impact of various and simultaneous identities that compound the effects of discrimination."

Christie stressed inclusion in the form of adding more voices in leadership, more perspectives in management, and more awareness in the C-suite. Not only would a more inclusive company have a diverse outlook on the business, but workers would also know there is a chance for someone like them to rise through the ranks.

As Christie puts it, the conversation needs to be not only about recruiting, but also retaining. It's one thing to recruit diverse talent, but hiring almost becomes frivolous if a company is unable to retain a talent base.

Part of the problem there, she said, lies in companies focusing on diversity headcounts while continuing to run their businesses exactly the way they did before.

"I think a 'cheap out' for diversity for a lot of brands is to hire people of color in very low-level, entry-level positions and mid-management where you don't have a lot of equity or decision making power," Christie said.

"It has to start from the top down," Christie said. "We have leaders that grew up in the forties when segregation was legal. So when we have those same kinds of people still heading entire divisions, publications, brands - those ideals trickle down from their way of thinking."

"One black person is not enough"

For decades, black Americans have had to adapt to working situations and environments that excluded and often disrespected them culturally.

One example of exclusion is hair. For decades, certain hair styles, such as braids, locs, and afro-hair, were considered to be "unprofessional" in corporate environments. This resulted in many black working professionals straightening their hair, or seeking to find alternative "professional" hairstyles - most of which simply mimicked the "working hairstyles" of their non-black counterparts.

The idea that braids, locs, and afro-hair are "unprofessional" is so engrained into corporate culture that the CROWN Act - which protects people from discrimination based on hairstyles - was introduced in 2019. The bill has been introduced in Congress, and is already law in California, New York and New Jersey. CNN reports that 22 other states are now considering its passage.

"We all have different cultural boundaries that other cultures don't understand," said Mecca James-Williams, a stylist and senior style editor at The Zoe Report. "We need these acts of non-discrimination when it comes to our hair," she said, referencing the Texas high school student who was told in January that he couldn't graduate because he had his hair in dreadlocks. "We need things like that there or we'll be stifled completely."

Harris pointed out that companies may find it easier to just adjust their policies so as to be more culturally tolerant and inclusive than to wait for the government to force them to do so. Christie stressed the importance of making sure diversity reaches the top executive ranks, so that cultural oversights don't happen in the first place.

"The point of diversity and inclusion and getting this right is that you have to be committed to it in a real way. You have to invest in it for the long term," Harris said. "One black person is not enough."