Health In Her HUE, a digital health app focusing on reducing health disparities for women of color, has announced a $3 million seed round. Health In Her HUE The digital health app connects Black women to the health care providers, services, and resources committed to their health and well-being. It was founded in 2018 by public health innovator Ashlee Wisdom and Eddwina Bright – who is no longer with the company. After getting her public health master’s and tired of reading research papers about the disparate healthcare outcomes for Black women, Wisdom had an
As Black-owned businesses face increasing financial pressures during and after the startup stage, many of them have sadly had to close their doors. The state of Black entrepreneurship Black Americans are among the most entrepreneurial groups in the nation, with 1 in 5 Black people in the US starting their own business. From 2017 to 2020, the nation witnessed a remarkable 13.64% surge in the number of Black-owned businesses. Black-owned firms brought in an estimated $141.1 billion in gross revenue in 2020 – an impressive 11% increase since 2017. In
According to experts, Black women are often hired or promoted to leadership roles during a crisis, often referred to as the “glass cliff”. The Glass Cliff The term “glass cliff” was coined by a social and organizational psychologist, Michelle Ryan, at the University of Exeter. It describes a situation where a woman or person of color gets promoted to a senior leadership role during a difficult time and when the risk of failure is high. The “glass cliff” is essentially the opposite of the “glass ceiling” – a term that
Black-owned venture capital firm, MaC Venture Capital, has hired finance and operations veteran Jennifer Randle as its first Chief Operating Officer (COO). MaC Venture Capital MaC was launched in 2019 by four founding partners: former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, former talent agent Charles D. King, VC veteran Marlon Nichols, and investor Michael Planak. The firm had its first $100 million fund in 2021 in seed-stage funding and a second $203 million in 2022. The team uses their skills and knowledge to support the next generation of tech companies, focusing on reshaping the culture
Co-founder of Flair AI, Mickey Friedman, has announced the company has generated thousands of composable human models in various poses to sell the target company’s beauty products. Friedman said they are helping to “speak to the audience’s diversity and reflect the target market.” Flair AI, founded in New York, is an AI design tool for branded content, allowing users to generate high-end product photography in minutes for CPG (consumer packaged goods) and beauty Brands. Friedman posted that companies can “target different demographics and represent your audience in marketing campaigns,” which had
Women of color are skilled, ambitious, and talented yet they continue to be underrepresented in senior positions in the workplace. In a recent study involving more than 300 companies and 40,000 employees, LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company have shed light on some of the experiences of women in the ‘post’-pandemic workplace. Here’s what we learned about the experiences of women of color in the workplace; the challenges they face and how they are taking their careers into their own hands. The Pipeline Problem Women of color are still hugely underrepresented in
Latinx women are severely underrepresented in technology and Venture Capital—as are Latinx people in general. For example, while a dismal 0.2% of all venture capital goes to Black women in the US, a mere 0.4% goes to Latinx women. According to a new report published by Project Diane, of the Latinx women who are reported to have received that 0.4% [of the $400 billion in venture capital funding between 2009 and 2017], only 58 ever raised over $1 million, But there are five women who are making great strides in the venture capital
As a naturally curious and confident person, Linda Kamau is no stranger to trailblazing. There were four paths in her all-girls school, and computer science was usually the path least chosen. But for Linda, computers were a passion, and she happily chose computer science to the surprise of her peers. She also had a natural interest in making things better, a talent encouraged by her older brother with whom she would spend time around the house repairing everything from radios to the roof. At many African universities, it is extremely
In the decade I’ve worked in the tech industry I’ve come to learn how common lay-offs are. In 2012 when I was a manager at Groupon, I had to lay off teammates I had hired after the share price slumped post-IPO. When I was a manager at HotelTonight in 2015, I watched as some of my fave teammates were laid off to cut costs after the founders tried and failed to raise another round of funding. Just last week I joined the millions of professionals affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
Last summer I gathered over a dozen womxn of color startup founders and small business owners to connect in Seattle, Washington. We shared our backgrounds, experiences, expertise, challenges and successes as a collective given the historical and systematic exclusion in the business ecosystem. We bonded on our common experience of being ‘the only’, steadily pioneering our own industries. We would have never thought that six months later the world would be facing a global health crisis and we’d be scrambling to secure funding to survive. On average, womxn of color
