August marks National Black Business Month and Black women-owned businesses have been celebrating with a rise in presence, revenue, and development opportunities amidst ongoing infrastructure challenges, research shows.
Black female entrepreneurs have dominated the business climate, representing roughly 2.1 million businesses and 52.1% of all Black-owned enterprises, according to a 2024 Wells Fargo Study. As the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs, Black women have worked to shape culture and create spaces for diversity to prosper, with business methods rooted in increasing representation, access to capital, education and reducing the racial wealth gap.
“When I think about the inherent qualities women carry – to be nurturers, to be community developers, to be community builders … I think it’s a natural need that exists in every community. When you think about small businesses and Black women, Black women represent the fastest-growing new business opportunities in the country. Small business in general generates all of our local jobs,” says Monica Ray, president of The Congress Heights Community Training and Development Corporation (CHCTDC). “When you think about how to bridge the gap between how we build sustainable communities, we can’t leave Black women out of the conversation.”
Black women-owned businesses saw a surge with the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing 32.7% in average revenues between 2019 and 2023, compared to all women-owned businesses’ growth of 11.2%, according to a 2024 Wells Fargo Study. Many of these self-starters utilized the lockdown to pivot or expand into new ventures, which allowed them to pursue more passions or earn a steady income.
For Dr. Lakeysha Hallmon, CEO and founder of the Village Market, the economic shock of the pandemic inspired her to dig deeper into the systemic challenges that Black entrepreneurs face. Last April, on an episode of Meghan Houle’s “Pivot with Purpose” podcast, she shared her mission-forward vision to drive economic growth and explore how she can “actualize dreams” within the community.
“I think more than being an entrepreneur, I’m deeply passionate about proactively solving problems. My goal and vision was to create a very vibrant ecosystem,” Hallmon explained. “[I want] for Black entrepreneurs to have the resources, the mentorship, and then, the end piece of that, the relationship with customers.”
The former educator began her community outreach in 2016 with the Village Market, an Atlanta-based staple center for Black-owned companies to increase revenue through e-commerce, seasonal marketplaces, strategic alliances, retail, and commercial prospects. Since then, she’s built a self-designed multi-prong business model, founding Our Village United and most recently, Elevate, a free 12-week incubator program that offers professional insight on how to scale businesses and compete within the industry.
Altogether, Hallmon has generated 8.3 million dollars of direct sales to Black businesses.
“We are the psalm of many parts, and I think it is very much so possible to still be the person that loves your full-time job and to be the person that has another bright idea that adds color to their life and more meaning,” Hallmon told “Pivot With Purpose.” “If you truly support something, you will put action behind it… If you do not have that action, the question back to yourself should be, ‘How can I become more active?’”
The BLACKBONE PROJECT: ‘An Ecosystem of Black Women’ Inspiring One Another
In the nation’s capital and beyond, Ray has continued to advocate for Black women in entrepreneurship, kickstarting initiatives like the BLACKBONE Project and annual Blackbone Project Summit, which tackle industrial issues ahead by educating employers on how to scale their personal businesses to full enterprises.
“Early in my career, I was often the lone Black woman in the room. I was often the woman who did not have…a woman mentor,” Ray says. “We struggled with having a lack of access to capital, and as I think all of us struggle with is the kind of life-work balance. So, I really wanted to create a space that would help women navigate some of the really choppy spaces that I have had to navigate early in my career.”
In a culmination of decades of work, the BLACKBONE project launched in 2023 to supply Black female founders with the resources, support and development to achieve business objectives and economic prosperity. The year-long program hosts a 17-week incubator training rooted in the foundations of building an enterprise – from the ideation phase to extra capital to the unique element of implementing support groups for founders to collaborate and strengthen their business modules.
Since its inception, the BLACKBONE Project has served 175 businesses, and about 60 of them have climbed the ladder from ideation to foreign cooperation and licensed businesses, each on average growing their gross revenues by 32% over a year, according to Ray.
“We’ve created an ecosystem of Black women and founders who are able to talk to one another. What we found through those accountability groups is [that] everybody wins. There’s not just a program pushing women to be better, but they’re pushing one another,” Ray told the Informer. “So we’re really excited about what we will find at the end of this thing; but also, small wins are happening every day.”
While Ray celebrates a transitional period to challenge racial equity, she also acknowledges that national pushback on Black businesses has had some detrimental effects.
As Black entrepreneurs continue to face infrastructural challenges within their businesses, a major hindrance is the lack of financial aid available. A McKinsey study showed that less than 2% of venture capitalist dollars goes to Black business owners, and less than 1% of that funding is given to Black or Hispanic women-led companies. The Harvard Business Review Study found that more than half of Black female founders self-fund their establishments, though only 29% of the group live in households with incomes over $75,000.
Other contributing obstacles include limited access to external credit, inability to qualify for loans, and inadequate use of resources and training that help companies elevate to the next level.
Without much federal support, innovators like Ray and Hallmon took it upon themselves to create a positive impact in underserved communities.
“Black people shape the world in general. Style, music, food…When you look at all of those evolutions, there’s been Black influence in all of those things, and I think Black businesses, no op is no different,” Ray says. “[Black women] are the driving market on how we buy and how we shop and what’s cool and what’s not. So, I think the same thing holds true for businesses. We just need the opportunity to be at the table at the right time.”
The Blackbone Project Summit hosted its second annual event at the Sycamore & Oak in Southeast, D.C. on July 27, and delivered an eventful and inspiring experience for Black women entrepreneurs to learn and grow amongst one another. The summit welcomed 1,100 registrations, granted more than $10,000 in direct support to businesses, and hosted 20 panelists, including seasoned entrepreneur and well-known media mogul Cathy Hughes, who is recognized as the second-richest Black woman in the world.
“This year’s summit has truly made an impact,” says Ray, the event founder. “The informative panels, invaluable advice, and vibrant networking opportunities have empowered women-owned businesses of all sizes and ages. Together, we are building a stronger, more connected community, and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved.
Ray emphasizes the importance of Black female representation in all fields.
“I believe that when we have Black women’s voices at the table, there isn’t an industry that doesn’t get better,” she says. “Just having our point of view, our perspective about the things that we buy, the products that we use, or need matters. So the more of us that are in the ecosystem, the better everybody is.”
Bridging the Gap Through HBCUs
A shared goal of many entrepreneurship initiatives is the emphasis on education and training, reflected in the missions of developments like the Howard University and PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship.
With a $16.8 million grant from PNC Bank, Howard University opened the National Center for Entrepreneurship in 2023, a five-year pilot program to establish an innovative national network across all historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and inform Black entrepreneurship broadly.
In addition to the Howard location, the center hosts three regional hubs at Morgan State University, Clark Atlanta University, and Texas Southern University that map out the entrepreneurial ecosystem in their region within their respective footprint, and allow the foundation for building communal relationships with organizations that support Black entrepreneurs.
“Our premise is that we won’t have a successful future if we don’t prepare our youth to own it. Ownership has been something that has been often taken from our community or never given in the first place, but that is where real generational wealth comes from,” says Erin Horne McKinney, national executive director for the Howard University and PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship. “When we see more Black billionaires, more Black-owned businesses being supported on a mainstream level, then we know that we’re no longer in a position where our communities are surviving, which has been the case for the last 400 years and in this country, but we’re actually thriving communities. Our goal is to help future generations thrive.”
Each university is home to a national program that financially supports HBCU students and faculty with grants, such as the Faculty Fellowship Program for faculty interested in studying Black entrepreneurship; the HBCU Startup Scholars given to collegiate entrepreneurs looking to scale their business with a $10,000 fund; and the Entrepreneurship Education Innovation Grant Program, which awards $25,000 to institutions looking to extend their entrepreneurial efforts.
Pillared in research, resources, education, curriculum, and programs, the National Center for Entrepreneurship aims to use the next three years of its pilot to strengthen the business network in the Black community with a multigenerational interdisciplinary approach. Through data collection and diagnostic testing, the system works to expose the most impactful gaps within the industry and apply that information to the next generation of entrepreneurs, even outside the collegiate sphere.
“The future to me is entrepreneurship and innovation. There’s so much that our community has been able to do with very little resources. Imagine what we could do when we’re actually fully supported, funded, and resourced in the same way that our white counterparts have been,” says McKinney. “What we’re doing is bigger than … being about HBCUs, or even just Black entrepreneurs. This is about creating a movement and a mindset to push and encourage economic empowerment of the Black community.”