Online lending marketplace LendingTree published a new study on places with the most Black-owned businesses in the United States, based on the US Census Bureau Annual Business Survey data. Fayetteville, NC was found to have the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the US. Other metros in the South — including Washington, DC — join Fayetteville at the top of the list. Pittsburgh, however, ranked the lowest out of the 50 American metros listed, with a mere 1.0% of small businesses being Black-owned — a percentage that falls below the national Black
Amazon Alexa Fund and Alexa Startups have teamed up to open the application round for Black Founders Build with Alexa, a remote four-month program for a cohort of up to 10 Black-founded startups located in North America that demonstrate readiness and ability to deliver novel Alexa integration within the program duration. Each company selected for the program will have an opportunity to receive up to a $100,000 investment from the Alexa Fund and individualized technology support from the Alexa Startups Solution Architect and Business Development teams. Founders will receive invitations
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
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
Today the Kapor Center, a nonprofit addressing racial inequities in STEM education and the tech industry, in partnership with the NAACP, released their 2022 report titled State of Tech Diversity: The Black Tech Ecosystem. The report analyzes and synthesizes the latest data, demonstrating the continual exclusion of Black talent across the tech ecosystem, which represents a great loss of talent and innovation for one of the major drivers of our nation’s economy. The report findings reveal that progress towards racial equity is not only stalled but in many respects, regressing, throughout
This week, Apple has released its latest Inclusion and Diversity report and the data in the report shows trends in Apple’s workforce between 2014 and 2021. Apple has been reporting its diversity numbers since 2014 when its workforce was under 93 thousand employees when women represented 30% of the worldwide workforce, 20% filled technical roles and 28% had leadership positions. The company now has over 165,000 employees globally across its retail, tech, non-tech, and leadership roles. From the data – it’s clear that the firm has increased its number of
Codecademy, the leading online learning platform for technical skills, is partnering with The Black and Brilliant Advocacy Network to launch an Applied Artificial Intelligence accelerator and mentorship program in Africa. After launching their first accelerator together in 2021, the organizations are teaming up again to bring the program to Africa and empower a new generation of tech talent in the region. Combining upskilling and mentorship, the Codecademy and Black and Brilliant program will focus on both the hard and soft skills needed to build successful careers in AI. Over the course of 10 weeks, participants
Startup founders often turn to friends and family for their first bit of funding but for many Black founders, that’s not an option. The “friends and family” round is when people who personally know the founders of a company pitch in money, either as a loan or in exchange for a small ownership stake but for those who may not have many family members or members with little capital – they can’t even ask them. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of Black households in the US is $24,100,
A Greensboro attorney and entrepreneur is bringing racial diversity to children’s entertainment by creating a range of books using AR. Kya Johnson launched online entertainment platform RainbowMe in December 2014 with co-founders Talib Graves-Manns, who is a marketing entrepreneur, and Bernard Bell, an Atlanta-based television veteran. Back in 2014- RainbowMe was one of three organizations to receive free workspace and $40,000 in seed funding from CODE2040’s Entrepreneurs-in-Residence pilot program. CODE2040, a San Francisco nonprofit that supports the inclusion of underrepresented minorities in the tech industry, partnered with Google on the initiative that’s backing African-American and
