Software developer Charlene Hunter is on a mission to close the diversity gap in the tech industry and is set on helping other Black women get their foot in the door. East Londoner Charlene founded Coding Black Females back in 2017 after feeling fed up with being the only Black woman in her role at her company. Her non-profit network is a community that uplifts Black female developers and helps them find opportunities. Coding Black Females, which Charlene runs alongside co-CTOs Tanya Powell and Efua Akumanyi and their team, has become a
Viral tweets of missing Black children, police brutality and misconduct have continued to dominate this year, with some posts leading to re-opened police investigations and discoveries. But it’s widely known that there is a huge disparity when it comes to media coverage on issues impacting minorities. This problem has been raised countless times and it’s one that James Samuel, founder of Anjel, knows far too well. In an interview over a Zoom call, the father of two boys told POCIT that he’d struggled to get attention from mainstream reporters and
Inspired by cinema, music video experiences, and interactive gaming, Cycmode is a boutique fitness studio offering multiple fitness offerings under one roof — indoor cycling, strength training, and yoga. The VR and in-studio space was launched in January by Tasha White. The first-floor indoor cycling studio features 35 bikes and a wall-to-wall massive 60-foot-wide curved video screen set in a cycling theatre. Workouts such as THE TRIP™ give riders the sensation of climbing and sprinting through digitally-created worlds paired with indoor cycling bikes that mimic an actual cycle, allowing riders to lean, turn
The technology industry’s academic and professional spaces have a long reputation of exclusivity and discrimination that has led to an industry that is predominantly all white and male – but some people are working hard to change this picture. POCIT sat down with Rose Robinson, Executive Director of Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT (CMD-IT), for an in-depth conversation on the barriers facing people of color with disabilities in tech. Robinson has more than 25 years under her belt. Her role at CMD-IT means she can use
Black-Owned Chicago AI Startup Lands $100K In Latest ‘Northwestern Mutual Black Founder’ Accelerator
A Chicago startup that uses AI to help people better leverage their professional network is part of the newest cohort of startups selected as part of the Northwestern Mutual’s Black Founder Accelerator program. 4Degrees, led by CEO Ablorde Ashigbi and CTO David Vandegrift, will receive a $100,000 investment as part of the 12-week program. It will also work alongside Northwestern Mutual and its accelerator partner gener8tor to help grow its business. The company, launched by Ashigbi and Vandegrift, two former investors at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, back in 2017 was
An African cross-border payments company has raised $150 million in a Series C extension round led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX. Chipper Cash, founded in 2018 by Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled, is a no-fee peer-to-peer cross-border payment service in Africa. Users can accept payments in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Kenya through their app. Chipper Cash‘s investment comes barely six months after it closed its first Series C round of $100 million, led by SVB Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of SVB Financial Group. Deciens Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bezos
A sequel on the piece of Black founders profitable without Venture capital. Not all startups reach the promised land of VC funding. Not all startups require VC funding to be successful. With the odds stacked against Black and Brown entrepreneurs, they typically need to find other ways to innovate and grow. Money isn’t always easy to come by. Bootstrapping means launching and growing your startup using your personal financial resources. See how these Black women founders left behind the “scale no matter what” mentality. Instead, they built their startups into successful, profitable
Florida A&M University has received a $100,000 grant from Wells Fargo to launch a small business incubator to assist women and minority-owned businesses. The grant will advance hiring initiatives for a program manager to oversee operations of the incubator and modernize an existing location for entrepreneurs to call home. Funding will also enable the incubator’s staff to support program participants in exploring the feasibility of their business concepts, launching, expanding, and scaling their businesses. The remaining funds will support future marketing and promotions throughout the development of the project. The
Vendease, a digital marketplace that allows food businesses to buy supplies straight from manufacturers and farms, has successfully raised a seed round of $3.2 million. When a restaurant places an order, the firm’s system generates all the possible suppliers that can fulfill it. It then looks at the best pricing versus quality and assigns that order to the supplier. According to the company, founded by Tunde Kara, delivery is made within 24 hours, either by itself or by a third-party logistics provider. This is a huge milestone for the company.
A Black veteran has developed an app, Anjel Tech, that could help track racial incidents and contribute to helping find missing people of color using live stream video and location sharing capabilities. Anjel Tech, founded by James Samuel, Jr, sends information to loved ones in real-time – providing them with the exact location the video was taken from. The app, which claims to share the data “discretely”, has been described as having the potential to decrease the number of dangerous incidents young Black people often face and give their families
