Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership

If selected as a winner, I would use the Elevate Prize funding to tell the story of black women entrepreneurs -- documenting the shared journey, highlighting the barriers and challenges they face, and discussing solutions to the systems barriers that have kept them from realizing their full potential. Elevating the voice of black women entrepreneurs is fundamental in changing the hearts, minds, and ultimately actions of the investor community. 

Too often, black women are forced into a superwoman role that they did not ask to take on but accept because there is no other choice. They have to do more with less and even so, continue to be excluded from the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite this, black women are still making tremendous strides as entrepreneurs and founders. Their journeys should be chronicled and their accomplishments celebrated.  

More specifically, I will hire a team to produce a podcast series to tell the story of black women entrepreneurs. In this series, I will interview entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and other champions who care deeply about this population. I will use the prize funding to get the podcast launched and would then seek sponsorship to continue to fund the work going forward.

My nearly 30-year career continues the legacy of my parents who were entrepreneurs for 20 years and staunch advocates for black entrepreneurs. I grew up hearing about the issues and challenges faced by black entrepreneurs. They had a great newspaper publishing business but they were unable to ever extract the value that they had created in their brand when they decided to retire and they simply shut the business down.

I had an opportunity to see the other world as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in Mergers & Acquisitions which was my first job out of college. I saw clients there who created tremendous wealth through building a business. Something I didn't see happening in the black community. Living in these two worlds informed my view of the challenges that we have today and set the path for the vision that I have for the future. 

My vision is to create $1B in new wealth over the next 10 years through the success of women of color entrepreneurs with black women leading the group. For this to happen requires a sea change among all stakeholders within the entrepreneurial ecosystem. That is my purpose and the fight that I live daily.

The Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL), founded in 2002, is a nonprofit organization with a mission to eradicate the systemic barriers that prevent people of color from being able to access the knowledge, networks, and capital required for entrepreneurial success and wealth creation. We have three program focus areas that support the mission.

Black women are starting businesses at higher rates than other groups, but receive less capital, have fewer exits, and produce less income for founders; they are at the bottom by every measure of success.

We believe that a reason for the lack of progress is that the programs designed to address the problem are focused on a perceived skills gap on the part of black women entrepreneurs. The reality is that these entrepreneurs have been excluded from capital access across the continuum as a result of bias, racism, and structural barriers meant to exclude them from participation in the capitalist system except as free labor. 

We create safe spaces for an honest exploration of the issues that lead to this dynamic and provide opportunities for discussion about game-changing solutions. We bring people together who would otherwise never meet and we offer hope for a different future.

Rather than focus on the skills deficit of black women entrepreneurs (which we believe is more perceived than real), we focus on addressing the knowledge and skills gap of the investor community related to inclusion issues. The need for this project was informed through the engagement of over over 300 attendees at WOCCON 2021. At WOCCON2021, we started a conversation aimed at dismantling the race-based practices that continue to uphold an exclusionary status quo. Only through re-framing the conversation about access to capital, will we be able to move toward an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem that provides greater access to opportunity. 

Our project will convene key stakeholder groups who say they value diversity and inclusion to figure out what they will do about it. As part of the conversations, we will explore the journey of black women color entrepreneurs and the policy and institutional practice solutions that will lead to systemic change. From the focus groups, we will create video/podcast content telling the stories of black women entrepreneurs as a living testament to policymakers, investors, and the lending community as both a mirror and a lens through which to see the systemic inequities in our current system clearly and poignantly. 

We are using our voice to create a community of change agents that have the power to change systems that impact humanity. For too long, black women have been denied basic rights and privileges, keeping them excluded from the rights enjoyed by others. They have been denied the right to use their ingenuity to create wealth and their innovations have been ignored. This exclusion has lead to a myriad of societal problems that keep black families and communities struggling to achieve basic human rights. Our work seeks to change this paradigm.

Through our Annual Women of Color Connecting Summits and other events, we are changing the narrative and elevating the conversation. People continue to say that we give them a space to discuss difficult issues and that their takeaways impact their actions going forward. Our events are effective at laying the foundation for re-framing the issues and building relationships that can lead to change.

The panel that I have moderated for Congressman Donald M. Payne, Jr. for five years at the Congressional Black Caucus and the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs Advancing Diversity series that I helped to create are examples of how we are extending our reach.