The $1.5 million Zoom call that forced a tech giant to rearchitect its platform
Jotaka Eaddy, founder of Win With Black Women, details intentional innovation at AfroTech after mobilizing 44,000 attendees in a historic presidential pivot
The massive digital mobilization orchestrated by Win With Black Women (WWBB) in July 2024, following Kamala Harris’s signaling of her presidential intent, serves as a core case study in leveraging technology for social good. This story was recently recounted by WWBB founder and CEO of Full Circle Strategies, Jotaka Eaddy, during an AfroTech panel titled “Win With Black Women: Lessons in Digital Innovation,” where she explored how intentionality drives change.
The collective, which began in 2020 out of frustration over the “racist and sexist attacks” against Black women potential vice presidential candidates, had a regular meeting planned. However, the announcement that President Joe Biden would not seek reelection, combined with Congresswoman Joyce Batty’s public claim that 30,000 Black women would join the WWBB call, immediately shattered the organization’s existing infrastructure.
The technical crisis was immediate: the standard WWBB Zoom account held only a thousand people, and the founder couldn’t even log in. A rapid switch to a 3,000-person webinar instantly filled, confirming that “hundreds of thousands of people... had felt the need to be in community that night.”
The decisive intervention came from a black woman named Artis Hampshire-Cowan, who, without being asked, called the Zoom COO, who was on vacation. Her message was succinct: “I’m on the Zoom and we need to open it up.” In real-time, Zoom engineers executed the expansion, raising the meeting’s capacity from 3,000 to an extraordinary 44,000 attendees by 10:30 p.m. Simultaneously, thousands more connected via Clubhouse and other digital spaces.
The impact was a massive “power shifting moment.” Thanks to Star Jones securing a link, the collective raised $1.5 million in 100 minutes. Eaddy reflected on the intensity, describing the moment she ended the call at 1:00 a.m. as disbanding “this long hug and embrace a powerful spiritual moment of black women saying we are here. We will not be ignored.”
The scale of this community engagement had profound corporate consequences. Eaddy revealed that as a direct result of the Black women’s participation, “Zoom changed their entire platform to be able to hold one million people on a single call.” The success, Eaddy argued, was not achieved through superficial metrics but through purpose, proving that innovation alone doesn’t create change—intentionality does. The event inspired a cascade effect, with Black men hosting their own call the next day, drawing 55,000 attendees.