Uber and Visa have announced Grants for Growth, a program that will provide $1 million in grant funding to small businesses in 10 US cities that are currently active on Uber Eats. The program will be administered by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). Focused on restaurant recovery and entrepreneurship, the program was created to support merchants when they need it most. “We know that this year has been trying for many and that independently-owned businesses continue to face significant business challenges. From natural disasters to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Forbes has just released its list of highest TikTok earners, and none of them are Black despite Khaby Lame being one of the app’s most-followed social media personalities. The platform’s highest-paid influencers collectively hauled in $55.5 million in 2021, a 200% increase from a year earlier. One of the top accounts on the app belongs to Khaby Lame, who has nearly 127 million followers on the platform as of this writing. This is slightly less than Charli D’Amelio, who has 133 million followers — just about 6 million more than Lame. Yet,
Kimberly Bryant, who founded Black Girls Code in 2011, released an official statement on December 30, days after the company’s board of directors suspended her after several misconduct complaints. The statement, which can be found on Twitter, said: “After obtaining legal counsel to address my unlawful suspension only days before Christmas, I spoke with ABC7’s Julian Glover to share additional details about concerns with members of the Black Girls. CODE board of directors.” She claimed the suspension was a part of an agenda to “impact a small, women-founded, women-led nonprofit” with women
Award-winning tech diversity champion Ezechi Britton has been appointed an MBE in the 2022 New Year Honours list for his services to Diversity and Young People. It comes years after Britton was named Venture Capitalist of the Year at the Inclusive Tech Alliance (ITA) Awards for his commitment to underrepresented founders and his “impressive transition from software development to venture capital”. Britton is the co-founder of Code Untapped, a social enterprise set up to increase the number of people in tech from ethnic minority backgrounds. The firm provides crucial training
Timnit Gebru, a former leading artificial intelligence computer scientist that worked at Google before the firm fired her, has just set up her own firm, the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Google had fired Gebru when she published academic papers denouncing the tech giant’s AI’s work on large language models that help retrieve answers to controversial search inquiries. The firm, an independent artificial intelligence research institute, was awarded $3.7 million in funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kapor Center, Open Society Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her company is
In response to a Black entrepreneur who said VCs are racist, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale attributed disparities in venture capital investing to “average black culture” and urged the Black community to step up their game. Funding to Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. hit nearly $1.8 billion through the first half of 2021 — a more than fourfold increase compared to the same time frame last year. Led by funding to early-stage startups, 2021’s half-year total has already surpassed the $1 billion invested in Black founders in all of 2020 and the
Purdue University, the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research and a coalition of other schools have launched the Blue Integrated Partnerships in a bid to support minority researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Blue Integrated Partnerships will round up underserved minority students and provide them an opportunity to partake in research projects and workshops at Purdue University and other participating institutions. The overarching goal is to ensure students are ready to pursue their academic ventures. Through the program, more minority students will be given support with the aid of a $2.8 million
Yesterday, we learned that Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, had been removed from leading the nonprofit. In fact, she allegedly learned that she had been pushed out of her company after she lost access to her computer and email account. In a statement, its board said it’s currently investigating allegations of “workplace impropriety,” but Bryant remains a staff member. Not many news outlets were covering the situation, and we came to this shocking revelation from a series of tweets that Bryant tweeted out herself. She wrote: “Press
Alhaji M. Sow, an 18-year-old sophomore studying aeronautical science at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), was shot and killed during a confrontation with officers on December 3. Now his family is reportedly questioning the use of force on their son. Here’s a breakdown of what we know so far: Around 10 p.m. on Friday, December 3, Melbourne police reported officers were called to the campus after news of the sophomore brandishing a knife and allegedly assaulting students with it. Authorities report Florida tech campus security confronted Sow inside the Roberts Hall, where investigators say he refused
A new report has found that the number of S&P 500 seats held by Black women has increased by more than 25% this year, following a 16% gain in 2020. The report conducted by the ISS Corporate Solutions, the data and analytics provider that advises companies on corporate governance matters, also found that the increase for Black women is twice the rate for women overall. Despite this, they still only hold 4% of S&P 500 board seats, the data shows. In November, Etsy Inc., Caesars Entertainment Inc., and HP Inc. were among companies adding Black
