News — Black Business

Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman and philanthropist. He is best known for being the founder and chairman of Econet Wireless International and Zimbabwe’s first billionaire.

Masiyiwa was born on January 29th, 1961 in Zimbabwe. His father was a miner who later became a businessman, and his mother was an entrepreneur whose interests ranged from retail sales to small-scale farming and transportation. In 1968 Masiyiwa and his family fled to the north-central Zambian town of Kitwe due to regional government instability. At the age of 12 Masiyiwa’s parents afforded him the opportunity to study abroad at a private school in Edinburgh, Scotland. After graduating in 1978, he returned to Zimbabwe with the intention to join the anti-government guerilla forces but was told by a senior officer that the conflict was almost over and that the country needed people like him to help rebuild it. Masiyiwa took the officer’s advice and in 1983 earned a degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Wales.

Masiyiwa traveled back to Zimbabwe in 1984 after a brief 1-year stint in the computer industry in Cambridge, England. He joined Zimbabwe Posts and Telecommunications Corporations (ZPTC) as a senior engineer and would eventually become a principal engineer within the company. In 1988 Masiyiwa left ZPTC due to frustrations with government bureaucracy.

Realizing there was there was great promise for wireless telephones in sub-Saharan Africa, Masiyiwa founded and financed Econet Wireless in 1990. This business venture was met with heavy opposition from ZPTC which had claimed a monopoly on telecommunications and the Zimbabwean government which wanted bribes. After lengthy legal battles, Masiyiwa’s Econet obtained a license to provide cell phone service in Zimbabwe. Econet would go on to have a presence in other African nations as well as New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Masiyiwa later became involved with the privately held London-based Liquid Telecom Group. This company is Africa’s largest fiber optic and satellite business. In 2018 Masiyiwa was named Zimbabwe’s first billionaire and in 2020 he became the first African to be appointed a Netflix Board member.

Known as a philanthropist, Masiyiwa and his wife, the former Tsitsi Maramba, established the Capernaum Trust which is a support program designed to educate Africa’s orphans and vulnerable children. He is also involved with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge initiative. Masiyiwa supports a wide range of health issues and campaigns against cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. He is co-chair of Grow Africa and has helped organize $15 billion for African agriculture. Masiyiwa’s Ambassador Andrew Young Scholarship, named after a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, provides funds to send African Students to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2015 he was awarded the Freedom Award by the International Rescue Committee for his contributions towards supporting refugees and championing the cause of dignity, individual freedom, and liberty.

Masiyiwa and his wife, Tsitsi have six children. He holds an honorary degree from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and has been named an influential figure by many publications including Time magazine and Forbes.

Duane “Myko” Cheers, Danita Claytor and Jumoke Jackson founded Everything Legendary in 2019 in D.C. to create a healthy food choice for their mothers. Cheers and Claytor teamed up with Jackson, a chef, to create their burger, made of pea protein and other vegan ingredients and seasonings.

They started selling at local pop-ups and street festivals. Since then, their plant-based business has gained traction with a wider audience. “Once we had that, we took it to the streets with pop-up stores and street festival sampling, and let the community taste it for themselves,” co-founder Cheers said. 

“We all know that today’s consumers are demanding that their food be nutritious and supercharged with flavor.”

The trio took their business to the “Shark Tank” on ABC. They pitched their plant-based burger on season 12 of the show. “One of the largest vegan restaurants based down in Atlanta, they tried to buy us early on,” Cheers told the show. “But there weren’t any sharks. I don’t want to make deals with stingrays; we came here to do business with the great whites!”

After pitching their business, billionaire Mark Cuban was convinced about their business model and decided to invest $300,000 for 22% of the business. “Amazing, driven, smart entrepreneurs with a great product always make a great investment,” Cuban told the Washington Business Journal. “Duane really impressed me and has continued to impress me since we started working together.”

After striking a deal with Cuban, the trio sold $250,000 worth of burgers online within 24 hours of the episode airing. “This is a vegan, flavorful movement that we’re starting right now. And we’re revolutionizing the entire industry,” Duane “Myko” Cheers, co-founder of Everything Legendary, said. 

“I believe that our product is better. You guys heard it on Shark Tank. All five sharks shared that this is the best plant-based burger they’ve ever had.” 

The trio launched their business with $17,000 in personal savings and an additional $30,000 in credit, Cheers said. Prior to featuring on Shark Tank, they had made $165,000 in sales.

“Our only challenge now is to market the business more,” he said. “We have capacity to produce 400,000 burgers a day,” Cheers told Washington Business Journal. The company has now evolved to a six-person company and is now focused on global expansion and staffing.

Beyoncé is a talented singer, mother, and businesswoman who is highly visible in the entertainment world, and blessing small businesses with $10,000 grants during the pandemic. The BeyGOOD Black-Owned Small Business Impact Fund has had a significant impact on small business owners.

BeyGood partnered with the NAACP to help business owners like Yolanda Perkins. She’s one of the fortunate business owners who received one of the grants. Undies by BlendiTone celebrates diversity by offering characters who may be relatable to youth who would like to wear undergarments who look more like them.

According to Black News, Perkins, a mother, noticed that there was a lack of diversity in the undergarments industry when she went on shopping trips with her children in major retail stores. Her idea to start Undies by BlendiTone was sparked in 2019. At that time, her 6-year-old daughter’s comment made her take notice.

“She said ‘I want something that looks like me on it. None of these characters look me,” and she was right,” Perkins stated.

The former inmate who embraced the liberation of becoming self-employed decided to take big leaps of faith. After conducting market research, she reportedly tested underwear sales through Facebook and Instagram. Perkins mentioned that she was surprised how quickly she sold out. Her start-up company’s success created more need for investment in production and marketing.

“All you have to do is believe AND take the first step. So glad that I didn’t give up on myself. The lessons I have learned over the years are the tools and resources I am using to build my brand,” Perkins said on Undies by BlendiTone’s Facebook page. “I hope my story continue(s) to encourage and inspire others to never give up!”

Black businesses remain largely unattractive to venture capitalists. As such, many Black entrepreneurs source funds through family and friends to launch or expand their business. Although the Black Lives Matter movement has shed some light on the challenges Black businesses experience, not much has changed.

Some social entrepreneurs have taken it upon themselves to highlight Black businesses through informal meetings and other formal events. Some social media influencers and Black media personnel are also playing their part by bringing to the fore Black-led businesses.

A Sacramento entrepreneur, Chris Lodgson, is also highlighting Black businesses in his region. He is the founder of Facebook pages Sac Black Biz Community, Sac Black Biz United, and Sac Black Biz Market, which are dedicated to Black businesses.

The purpose of these platforms is to bring Sacramento business owners, who are mostly African-American, Caribbean, and people of African descent, together to support one another. Also, Sac Black Biz United has become the first and only online source to finding Black Business and Event information throughout Sacramento.

In all, his group pages feature over 500 businesses and a membership of more than 10,000 people. Lodgson believes the creation of the Facebook business page, Sac Black Biz Community, is his contribution towards supporting Black enterprises.

“We measure ourselves by how well the businesses that we serve are doing and how well those businesses are serving their clients (and customers),” Lodgson tells Sacbee.

Aside from the business pages, the New Yorker has also raised thousands of dollars to support business activities for Black people in Sacramento.

Lodgson first migrated to Sacramento in 2015. “When I got here, I noticed that a lot of the same problems we were having in New York, in terms of Black folks, poverty, unemployment, our economic condition and our social condition too. A lot of the same problems that were in New York were happening here” said Lodgson. These factors pushed him to create his Facebook business pages.

In addition, he has announced a partnership with the app “Local Black Info.” The app enables users to find and support local Black-owned businesses, professionals, and events, according to news. Also, the partnership allows Sac Black Biz to market Black businesses in Sacramento and the U.S.

In the wake of protests against racial injustice and police brutality sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, there was a renewed support for local Black-owned businesses. Lodgson said he did not only help in highlighting Black businesses through his group page Sac Black Biz Community, but he was also able to provide a complete Sac Black Biz digital database of Black-owned businesses in the county.

“The database became a valuable resource for the community that was easily accessible and allowed people to find everything from Black-owned bakeries, barbershops, restaurants, floral arrangements, home maintenance and repair, plumbers and more,” he said.

Brian Brackeen, founder and former CEO of Kairos, was fired by his company’s board of directors in 2018.

The successful entrepreneur raised $13 million for Kairos and garnered national attention for his groundbreaking facial recognition technology. But Brackeen’s refusal to sell his company’s technology to law enforcement may have led to allegations against him that eventually pushed him out of the company. A year later, the legal battle between Brackeen and the Kairos board ended in Brackeen’s favor.

Now, Brackeen is returning to Kairos as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. All parties involved in the 2018 debacle have departed. Kairos’ new leadership team has voted to bring Brackeen back to the company to continue his mission and goals for Kairo.

“We are delighted to have Brian back at the company, now more than ever the world needs to address fairness and inclusiveness in AI and Kairos continues its mission with Brian on board to deliver bias-free face recognition software to the world,” said E Jay Saunders, Chairman of Kairos, in a statement. “We look forward to having his insights and working with Brian to grow the company worldwide.”

Leading Kairos to Success

Brackeen is the brains behind Kairo. He worked as a senior project manager for Apple Inc. and senior managing consultant for IBM before launching his masterpiece.

Kairos is a human analytics company that uses facial recognition to help companies better interact with their stakeholders. It blends together social science and technology, allowing businesses to obtain data that impact consumer decision-making in real-time.

In 2016, Brackeen was the recipient of the Innovator of the Year award at the BLACK ENTERPRISE Tech Summit. During the event, he spoke about the team’s remarkable accomplishments.

“In the last 12 months, we processed 250 million faces. We’ve grown revenue 200% year over year and we’ve declined marketing spend on that time. Also, last quarter was our best quarter ever. Last month, was our best month ever. We just continue to trend upward and up. Kairos is Greek for the most opportune moment. We really believe that this is it.”

Nearly three years after his departure, Brackeen is returning to Kairos to bring his expertise in algorithmic bias. As chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, he will continue his work to address and eliminate racial bias from the technology.

“In my first action in this role, I’ve directed the company to focus on a new API— the “Bias API”, which will allow firms all over the world to detect and fix biases in their algorithms.” Says Brackeen. “We intend to do deals with the big players like AWS, Google Cloud, and others to expose our service in their clouds to their customers, as well. Kairos will cement its place as a leader in this space, right at the correct time. We have learned so much over the last nearly 10 years, it’s time to use that knowledge for good beyond Kairos’ walls.”

Brackeen’s Battle to Keep His Company

Brackeen’s disputes with his board raised questions about white investors and their treatment of Black founders.

Brackeen encountered a series of problems from the board and investors after refusing to sell his technology to law enforcement.

The Kairo board accused Brackeen of using company funds for unauthorized trips, meals, and expenses. Brackeen denied the allegations and filed a countersuit. In a letter to his investors, he shared that the board filed an exaggerated lawsuit against him to justify termination. He also believed they used it as leverage against him to force him to work for free.

Brackeen filed a lawsuit against the Kairos board.  It alleges that an investor pressured Brackeen to reconsider selling the company’s tech to law enforcement. It reveals that a “fundamental clash” ensued. This fueled the board and investors’ mission to “push Brackeen out of Kairos.”

In 2019, Brackeen and the Kairos board reached a settlement in court. The Company and Brackeen agreed to part ways. They also agreed that Brackeen would continue to be recognized as founder and remain a shareholder.

“Founders of color and women are under-invested in,” he shared. “We are either not getting great representation or we don’t have VC’s (venture capitalists) on our side. For those that are able to overcome that huge hurdle, they are then squeezed from the other side.”

There is a long way to go to achieve funding parity and remove racial bias from decisions. But Brackeen is using his voice and capital to level the playing field.

A Black businesswoman has accused a Connecticut bank of racism after officials there allegedly refused to allow her to withdraw her money. Gwen Samuel said she felt humiliated by the alleged incident that took place at the Southington-based branch of TD Bank.

According to her, officials of the bank did not offer any explanation why they refused to give her the money. She later used the ATM of the bank’s other branch to withdraw her money.

Samuel is a social activist and founder of the Connecticut Parents Union, a group advocating for equal educational opportunities for children in Connecticut. She said she has been a customer of the bank for 16 years and had gone to withdraw an amount of $1,000 from the bank to pay a vendor.

“I go inside, I had my TD Bank card and my license. They were cordial. I’m not even gonna say they were rude,” she told Fox61. According to her, the teller at the branch spent a lot of time going through her account before refusing the withdrawal.

“She hands me my license and she says, ‘I don’t feel comfortable giving you the money.’ So, I got confused, so I said, ‘You don’t feel comfortable giving me the money,'” she said. “Well, you just deposited the check yesterday.”

Even though Samuel told the teller that the check has been cleared and verified, the teller responded: “And she said ‘oh yeah it cleared. The money is available. I just don’t feel comfortable giving it to you,'” a speechless Samuel said. 

In a statement, TD Bank said it is proudly serving a diverse community and does not discriminate against its customers. The statement also described the incident as regrettable and noted that it was contacting the victim to address her concerns.

“At TD Bank, we proudly serve diverse communities and customers and do not discriminate in the services we provide or the products we offer,” the statement said. “The security of our customers’ accounts is a top priority and we regret that the specific reasons why the transaction could not be completed may not have been explained to Ms. Samuel at our Queen Street store in Southington.”

Bianca S. Robinson was already a successful career consultant before she made the grand leap to digitize her business. Now, she’s a “business architect,” as she calls her service, teaching SMB owners, entrepreneurs, and CEOs how to structure recurring sales pipelines using information products. In 2020, she helped her clients to earn a collective $2.1 million in revenues on digital channels alone.

Running Your Business Should Be Fun

Emotionally exhausted from years of grinding it out, consulting one client at a time, Robinson realized that she could both make more money and help more clients by pivoting to digital products.

Having digitally transformed her own business, she uses her experience to teach other SMBs how to digitally transform theirs for more revenue and work-life balance. Robinson is passionate about the ways that digital transformation can make service-based businesses more profitable and more fun to run.

 “Our mission here is to teach service providers how to fall back in love with their business, by getting their time, freedom back, but also making the money that they deserve based on a lifestyle that they want to have,” Robinson explains. “And so I’m really big about that because when we start these businesses, we have the vision in mind but we get so busy working in the business that we don’t work on it.”

Robinson’s company, Cayden Cay Consulting, does all the heavy lifting for clients. She helps them produce training courses, build landing pages, marketing and sales funnels for digital assets, run webinars, and more. That’s why she’s the “business architect.”

COVID-19 as a ‘Blessing in Disguise’

All this was long before COVID-19 hit, but Robinson didn’t sit idle when there were SMBs looking for help. She redoubled her efforts to help business owners diversify their revenue streams and make more money without dedicating their entire lives to work.

“Even though COVID has happened and business is different, we’re just now creating digital streams of income in our client’s business model, and so a lot of them have been able to make more money since we’ve created this stream,” she says.

Robinson doesn’t accept excuses, insisting that COVID-19 can be an opportunity for SMB owners to focus on digital transformation. “It’s time for you to get cute, put on a shirt, do this Zoom and give this presentation,” she says. “It’s time for you to build up your YouTube, it’s time for you to build up your IGTV and do your Facebook Lives and your Instagram Stories. It’s time for that, and so a lot of my clients, even though they were doing it, they had other things that wasn’t allowing them to be consistent with going live.”

You can see Robinson walks the walk. She’s only expanded operations during the pandemic, adding more training resources and more support staff. “We went from one employee to four employees in a matter of six months, and so I’ve really been putting the time, energy, and effort to handle the flux of clients that are going to come in, but also to have really good customer service.”

The Tools of the Trade

Robinson isn’t shy about giving credit to vcita for helping her build her business. That’s the tool she used to start accepting bookings on her website and add more services, and she says it gave her the confidence to keep moving forward. “Well, vcita had this thing where you could make your scheduling site into a website, and it just gave me the confidence to have the look and the feel of like I was a real corporation and I had real clients and I was making real money, and so it gave me that ability to be confident in my business.”

She’s quick to share the tools for her success, too. As a vcita reseller, Robinson uses the platform to set up all her clients’ email marketing sequences and contact management systems on their behalf. Because she’s thoroughly familiar with how all the systems work, it’s easy for her to help when clients are struggling with a task.

“They don’t really care how it works,” she says. “They just want to be able to use the system, and so for me to be able to go in there and to give them all of the functionalities that they need, and just to set it up for them, and then to show them actually how to do it, it’s been a game-changer for my business and my clients.”

Robinson’s final words of advice to SMB owners? The opportunity is out there if you’re strategic about it: “In a social media, digital age, you can get on your computer like this and reach all of these people, but you have to have the plan in place.”

Siebert Williams Shank & Co.‘s(SWS) Clear Vision Impact Fund announced Thursday it will begin making small loans to small businesses that are either minority-owned and operated or serve underperforming communities that experienced a lack of support.

The Clear Vision impact Fund was started last year by the financial services firm and received capital commitments from Microsoft, Apple, Comcast, eBay, and Constellation Brands. Each brand has made a significant financial commitment to advance racial equity and economic opportunities.

The funds will go toward small businesses that employ, train, and serve minority and underserved communities and the people that live and work in those communities. The effort will not only help businesses in these communities thrive by partnering them with their community. It will also help by growing those businesses from the closest proximity to them outwards into other areas.

Mike Cavanagh, the chief financial officer for Comcast, said in a statement that the Clear Vision Impact Fund provided an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

“Suzanne Shank, Chris Williams, and team have created an incredible platform to provide minority-owned
businesses operating in underserved markets with immediate and much-needed capital at a
critical time,” Cavanagh said in a release. “We hope that our $25 million investment in the Clear Vision Impact Fund and ongoing great partnership with Siebert Williams Shank & Co. will have a meaningful impact on diverse communities nationwide, as our company continues to accelerate its efforts to address systemic
inequality and create a more equitable society.”

Small business owners that qualify can apply for a grant at contact@clearvisionimpact.com.

Apple Vice President and Corporate Treasurer Gary Wipfler said the Clear Vision Impact Fund will provide multiple windows of opportunity for those who have great ideas but do not have the capital to see them through.

“Providing capital to minority-owned businesses is critical to ensuring economic growth and job
opportunities for the future across communities nationwide,” Wipfler said. “Apple is proud to be part of the Clear Vision Impact Fund and support their work to address inequality by expanding access to economic
opportunity.”

For so many years, the agriculture sector has been the mainstay of Africa’s economy until it was recently overtaken by the services sector. Many development analysts have said agriculture is the surest way the continent can escape from extreme hunger and unemployment.

However, the challenge confronting many of the continent’s youth who want to go into farming is the lack of access to capital, logistical constraint and other incentives. For instance, in Europe and America, farmers enjoy subsidies from the government but the situation is not so in many African countries. 

Farmers are virtually on their own and what makes it worse is that they face competition from cheap imported frozen chicken, fish and other agricultural products from western capitals. 

Therefore, for one to venture into full-time farming in Africa, it takes not only courage but true love for the profession. That’s exactly how Ayodele Pamela felt when she wanted to start poultry farming in Nigeria. 

“I never had the tiniest of intentions of going into farming at all,” Pamela told thefounders. “In fact, I would have strongly disputed it if I had been told that I would ever be involved in farming.”

Her comments reflect the general lack of interest in farming among a new generation of African youth. Despite the lack of interest, the sector remains the second-largest employer and still attracts a considerable number of young people.

Pamela started her poultry business on the back of buying catfish and eggs. One day, she saw a vacant land, asked for the price, purchased it and commenced fish farming on the land. She later bought 100 Layer Chicks to start her poultry farm.

“Having nowhere to house the chicks, I begged someone to allow me keep the chicks with him, then I go to feed them,” Pamela said. “When the chicks started laying, I just used to dash it out.”

Her husband impressed on her to start selling the eggs since there is a market for them. This would not only let her earn some income, but it will help her recover the money she invested in feeding the chicks.

“Whenever the eggs reach 10 creates, I’ll sell them; I then noticed that this was a profitable venture, that’s when I now built a suitable housing for them, then I moved 100 birds there,” Pamela said. “After my husband supported me to get 500 birds to add to the existing ones,” she added.

According to her, she starting her fish farming and poultry business having no knowledge of it. “I practiced with my own chicks and fishes, no prior learning at all,” she said.

One of the recurring challenges confronting Pamela is the supply glut in the industry. She said due to excess supply, she is sometimes forced to drop her price in order to sell. She is, however, “still very much strong” in the business and has even expanded.

Nashlie Sephus is on a mission to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, to train the next generation in technology. Downtown Jackson is not known for its technology prowess but Sephus wants to put the community on the map of technology hubs in America.

She is building a $25-million Jackson Tech District out of 12 abandoned acres of vacant lots and ramshackle buildings in downtown Jackson. “My goal is to turn this space into a self-sustaining village where people can live, work, play, and eat,” Sephus tells Inc.

The plan includes developing seven of the abandoned buildings within five years and the redevelopment will include a maker’s space, an electronics lab, a photography studio, apartments, restaurants, a grocery store as well as an innovation center. 

The techpreneur works at Amazon as an applied science manager for its artificial intelligence initiative. Before joining Amazon, she was the chief technology officer of the startup firm Partpic, a visual recognition technology.

Partpic was sold to Amazon in 2016 and in 2018, Sephus launched her own company called Bean Path. The firm is an incubator and technology consulting nonprofit, Sephus says, and claims to have helped over 400 locals businesses and individuals with their technology needs.

She founded Bean Path after she watched members of her team get laid off during an internship at Delphi Technologies in Indiana. That was when she decided to be her own boss.

The idea to build a tech hub occurred to Sephus in 2018 when she was looking for an office space for Bean Path. According to Inc., her search for an office space focused on the downtown Jackson area, a once booming business community for Black businesses. 

“It’s clear that people don’t expect anything good to come from Jackson,” she says. “So it’s up to us to build something for our hometown, something for the people coming behind us.”

She adds: “It had never occurred to me, even though I had sold a company to Amazon and was working with some of the top people at Amazon and having led a whole startup, started our own nonprofit. It just never occurred to me that I, a young Black female, could buy a building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.”

Her vision to build a tech hub in downtown Jackson has resonated with some investors and city officials, including her superiors at Amazon. One of such investors is Toni Cooley, whom Sephus once provided tech help.

Contrary to her fears, Amazon has also offered a helping hand through its Amazon Future Engineer program, which provides scholarships and instruction for teachers interested in improving their tech skills.

Raising money to finance her project has been one of Sephus’ challenges. In fact, less than 10% of Black businesses get access to venture funding. She has sunk $500,000 of her savings into the project, in addition to funds she raised from friends and families amounting to some $150,000. 

She intends to raise additional cash through crowdfunding, grants and private sources. The tech hub project will generate funds through rentals and membership fees, she says.

Sephus obtained her first degree in computer engineering at Mississippi State University. She subsequently earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Gretta Jackson took a job as a part-time server job at an Outback in Southfield almost two decades ago to put some extra money in her pocket. She worked her way up to become the first Black woman in the Detroit area to own her own location.

She announced the news on her Facebook page:

“On this day 19 years ago I began my journey with OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE as a part time server… What started off as a Hustle would quickly become my career…. fast forward to today MY 19TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY with this company and I NOW OWN MY VERY OWN OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE!!!  BECOMING THE FIRST BLACK FEMALE MANAGING PARTNER FOR OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE IN THE DETROIT MARKET!!

GOD IS AMAZING…THANKING AND PRAISING HIM FOR IT ALL 

NOW HIRING FOR ALL POSITIONS

“

Jackson can now say she’s the managing partner of an Outback Steakhouse restaurant in Roseville.

After posting to her social media page, Jackson told Fox 2 Detroit how people randomly stopped by the restaurant to show her support.

“What started off as what I thought was just a simple post to celebrate a milestone in my life quickly turned into something else,” she said. “I could never imagined so many people would come to say hi and thank you and congratulations to me in person. I’ve had people send gifts, flowers, Edible Arrangements to the restaurant for me. Just an overwhelming amount of love and support.”

Ariel Investments, the first black-owned mutual fund firm in the nation, announced the launch of Ariel Alternatives and the Project Black initiative.

The firm is stepping into the private fund business with a $200 million commitment from JPMorgan Chase. Led by Ariel Investments co-CEO Mellody Hobson and global investment manager Leslie A Brun, the fund seeks to invest and scale minority-owned businesses to close the racial wealth gap.

“It is no secret that the racial wealth gap in America continues to widen, day by day, says Brun in a release. “While we have been encouraged and inspired by the supply chain diversity commitments recently made by large corporations, we believe that it is time to accelerate these promises with real, measurable steps. Our work will aim to bring operational excellence, financial resources, minority ownership, and leadership to these companies.”

Introducing Ariel Alternatives ‘Project Black’ Initiative

Founded in 1983 by John W. Rogers, Jr., Ariel Investments has grown to manage $15 billion in assets by leveraging a patient investment philosophy. Now, the company is embarking on a new journey through the establishment of its private asset management firm, Ariel Alternatives.

The firms’ first mission: Project Black. The goal is to invest and scale minority-owned businesses that can become leading suppliers to Fortune 500 companies. The project will focus on suppliers to various industries, including transportation, technology manufacturing, and media and marketing,

Project Black Vision

According to a release, Project Black will invest in middle-market companies that are not currently minority-owned. The entities will be transformed into certified minority business enterprises, as well as existing Black and Latinx-owned businesses. The team hopes that Project Black will “forge a new class of Black and Latinx entrepreneurs” and support supply chain diversity goals.

These goals will have a trickle-down effect, boosting economic activity, increasing jobs, and providing access to opportunities for underrepresented populations at all levels.  Ultimately, the project will play an instrumental role in closing the racial wealth gap.

“Through Project Black, we plan to ultimately disperse opportunity throughout underrepresented communities. We want to change the narrative and foster true action and demonstrable change,” says Ariel’s co-CEO Mellody Hobson, in the release.

JPMorgan Chase Provides Initial Funding

According to the Chicago Tribune, Project Black was born from a conversation between JPMorgan CEO and Hobson. In 2018, JPMorgan Chase elected Hobson to its board of directors. Dimon and Hobson discussed ways to promote minority-owned businesses and the new fund was created.

JPMorgan is supporting the efforts of Project Black by providing $200 million in initial funding. This investment is part of the firm’s goals to advance racial equity. In October, the firm announced a $30 billion commitment. Over the next five years, this capital will provide economic opportunities to underserved communities.

“Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history,” said Dimon in a statement. “We can do more and do better to break down systems that have propagated racism and widespread economic inequality, especially for Black and Latinx people. It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”