Twitter Fixes Fast Company's All-White 'Smart Women' List

Fast Company recently posted a list entitled “25 Of The Smartest Women On Twitter.” It was dull (Chelsea Clinton? Good suggestion, never heard of her!) and, more egregiously, didn’t include a single black woman.

“As a woman CEO who writes about women in leadership, I’m frequently looking to make connections with other women on Twitter,” BRANDfog founder Ann Charles wrote, adding that they were “drawn from a wide spectrum of industries, professions, and geographies.” What about the color spectrum?

Enter the hashtag #SmartBlackWomenOnTwitter (and #SmartLatinaWomenonTwitter, among other variations): smart women upon women upon women who aren’t white. Imagine that!

Fast Company issued a formal response today:

There was some appropriate criticism about who was missing (“Spoiler alert: not one Black woman,” one Twitter user sharply, correctly noted). And we followed closely as the whole thing morphed into hashtags, including #SmartBlackWomenOfTwitter and #SmartLatinaWomenOfTwitter. You’ll find a treasure trove of big thinkers and innovators to follow there. We consider ourselves lucky to have an engaged audience who calls it like they see it (or don’t see it in this case).

We’re big believers in the idea that the future of business looks a lot less like Steve Ballmer and a lot more like Kelvin Doe, Yvonne Greenstreet, and Reshma Saujani. That idea is reflected in our annual lists, including Most Innovative Companies and Most Creative People. We squandered the opportunity to do the same with our initial Twitter list.

Here’s a solid slideshow of some of the hashtag suggestions from Huffington Post. Judging by Charles’ new follows, she’s listening, too.