Brazilian companies have started to explicitly seek out Black and Indigenous workers to diversify their ranks, a step to reverse the deep inequality that has racked the country since the area was first settled centuries ago. The country is LinkedIn’s third-largest market, after the United States and India, with 55 million users, or one in every four people in Brazil. So naturally, employers would advertise jobs there. But in February, a think tank in São Paulo was looking for a financial coordinator that would be willing to take on the
Buy now pay later (BNPL)—a short-term consumer financing that allows shoppers to purchase products online and pay in installments with nominal or no fees—is sweeping the global e-commerce sector. In Africa, BNPL is beginning to take shape with CredPal, one of the earliest pioneers of buy now, pay later in Nigeria, closing a bridge round of $15 million in equity and debt — the latter constituting a very large chunk of the financing — to expand its consumer credit offerings across Africa. The Y Combinator- and Google-backed CredPal allows individuals
Just 15 at the time of his conviction, Marcus Bullock was sentenced to a penitentiary full of men twice his age. Now he is the founder of Flikshop, a mobile app for people to upload and send digital postcards with photos and messages that make their way to their loved ones currently incarcerated. To use the Flikshop app, users pay 99 cents to send a message and upload a photo that can be sent to prisons and jails across the nation. Bullock also has a Flikshop Angels program that allows people to
Starting as a listserv, Visible Figures has grown into a support network for Black women in tech. The group’s name is a play off the book and movie Hidden Figures about three Black women — two mathematicians and an engineer — working at NASA in the 1960s. Visible Figures, which has $2.1B in collective capital raised, was formed in 2017 by Stephanie VanPutten, who raised $2million for her own startup. It was launched in response to a report that found only 12 Black women in the world had raised $1M+ in venture capital. In
Founder of femtech startup Ruby Love, Crystal Etienne, joined forces with her husband, Jean, last year to start VC firm CaJE, a VC that focuses on investing in “soil” rounds, similar to a family and friends investing round. Crystal’s own startup has raised $15 million since it was founded in 2016. She bootstrapped the company from its humble beginnings to over $10 million within two years. But she still felt “cajed” many times while entering the new industry with very little help along the way, but overcame every obstacle. Jean ran his
Clark Atlanta has announced that it has been awarded nearly $12 million in grant funding to establish a “Knowledge Metaverse” hub. The Knowledge Metaverse, according to a school release, “amplifies access and engagement in learning by combining the real world with digital information and extended reality (XR) similar to immersive experiences that have become increasingly popular in arts, gaming, and entertainment.” The grant was supplied by EON Reality, described by the school as “the global leader in augmented and virtual reality learning solutions.” Clark Atlanta is the first HBCU to
Melissa Pegus has been chosen as the Managing Director for Techstars Atlanta Powered by J.P. Morgan, the latest accelerator to open up in the city. The new program, backed by an $80 million investment by J.P. Morgan, will support diverse entrepreneurs across the country. While the program is open to founders of all backgrounds, it is designed to provide equitable access to funding and support for Black, Hispanic and Latino, Indigenous American, and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs. In the first half of 2021, Black entrepreneurs received just 1.2 percent of U.S. venture capital funding. Additional data show
If you’re a fan of the Emmy award-winning series Pose, you will already know Angelica Ross as the feisty trans character, ‘Candy Ferocity’. But outside of Hollywood and in 2014, Angelica founded TransTech Social Enterprises; an organization that works to provide education, support, and jobs to trans people facing discrimination in the tech sector. In 2017, she then hosted the TransTech Summit, which is a free event for attendees to be educated on ways to level up in their careers and the industry. Two years ago Angelica told cnet.com, “technology saved my
PagerDuty is hiring on pocitjobs.com PagerDuty is a known global leader in digital operations management, but the company, according to London-based EMEA senior sales director Ross Burrell, is also leading the way when it comes to a good working culture for its staff – particularly those from minority groups. “There’s an open-door policy,” he told POCIT when asked how he’s been able to grow at the company. Ross, a father and an experienced salesman said there’s no hierarchy issue at the firm, no micromanaging or aggression. Instead, you receive a
Churpy, a Kenyan fintech startup, has secured a $1 million seed round led by Unicorn Growth Capital. Also participating were Antler East Africa, Nairobi’s business angel network, and a group of Rally Cap LPs. The round will be used to support expansion to Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa. The startup said it wants to transform how businesses manage the debt owed to them by their customers through its Software as a service (SaaS) product – which automates the labor-intensive processes of reconciling incoming payments and invoices that are still predominantly manual for most local
