Latinx founders are the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in America–but their businesses are struggling to scale and that is partly due to the serious lack of funding they’re given. Latinx founders own 350,000 businesses with employees in the United States, and these businesses create nearly three million American jobs, according to research I led with Stanford University’s Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative. And yet they receive a small portion of the investment piece. While overall numbers on funding for Latinx founders are depressing, Individual stories are inspiring. The 2021 Crunchbase Diversity Spotlight Report highlights the 30 Black-
Tesla HR chief Valerie Capers Workman is leaving the company, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. Workman first became Tesla’s head of HR in 2020 and was among the most senior Black executives at the company. She first joined the company in 2018 as an attorney in its legal department but now she’s set to join Handshake, the career network firm, as a chief legal officer. In the internal email seen by Bloomberg, Workman compared her experience at Tesla with that of her time in track and field
Everyone has a hobby, most people have some sort of passion, and others, like John, have ambition. He was aged 14-years-old when he started “burrowing” his parent’s phones to see how they were made. He would study the compartments of the devices, taking it all in and making notes. Eventually – he taught himself how to code, started making web applications, and created an NFT (non-fungible token) with node, typescript, and solidity. His skill-set gained him wide-spread attention from his friends, who started spreading the word on his services. At
Angela Majette, a Bronx native, worked as a legal consultant for years before launching her own organization dedicated to helping her community. Her years of experience in the field allowed her to witness firsthand the struggles Black founders on their entrepreneurship journey experienced when it came to getting good counsel for a reasonable price. The struggles experienced by minorities – especially the Black community is what led her to launch Black Connect, an organization that aims to support Black-owned businesses with pro bono legal support and establish solid legal footing. Launched
The Black Female Duo That’s Taking Mentoring To Another Level: Black Girls In Tech Founders Tell-All
Black Girls In Tech is a European-based organization focused on supporting and uplifting young women from the Black community interested in getting a foot in the tech industry. It was launched by two women, Karen Emelu and Valerie Oyiki, who admit that growing up they were never exposed to a range of industries, and instead, they were encouraged to take on the “traditional” routes, such as medicine and law. The organization was launched during the pandemic at a time when the challenges experienced by Britons and those in Ireland, where
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
