Yetunde Hofmann is on a mission to help women break the glass ceiling

After a fast-paced career in FTSE 100 and global companies, Yetunde Hofmann was told there was no place for love in business, but has been led by her faith to embrace it as a leadership model. 

In 2021 you founded Solaris, a leadership development programme for black professional women. What prompted you to start it?

The murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 was the trigger point. I couldn’t sleep for days. I wrote to all the leaders I knew in organisations and asked: “What are you doing? What’s your business doing?” 

I got the responses: “We’re trying to do this, trying to do that,” but I still couldn’t sleep. My husband said to me: “Well, if, you can’t sleep, and you feel this way, then you’ve got to do something about it.” I wondered: “What can I do?” 

First of all, there’s very little representation of people that look like me at the most senior levels. For every 100 men promoted into management positions, only 58 black women are. We all know that representation counts; role models count.