Initialized, a standalone San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm that now has $3.2 billion in assets under management and more than 200 active companies in the portfolio, has announced Abdul Ly as its fourth principal. In a post made on the company’s official website, it was revealed that the United States-born, Senegal-raised Ly is the third principal to join the team through their open search process. “At Initialized, we don’t evaluate founders based on education level or work credentials,” wrote the company in its official announcement. “Instead, we are more interested in their lived experience and the product they are building. [Abdul Ly]’s philosophy about how he meets founders complements that of our investment team. He is most eager to learn about the distance a founder has traveled and the steps they took to get to where they are today.” According to a blog post, prior to his work at Initialized, Abdul Ly had a background at such companies as Google. He was...

Rarely do we get to see travel depicted in a way that’s racially diverse, but this travel enthusiast is looking to change that. Claire Soares, entrepreneur and founder of Up In The Air Life , created a  travel company that focuses on curating luxury experiences all around the world while making Black travelers a priority. Soares left corporate America to pursue this business venture in hopes of providing other Black travelers with the same quality experiences she was accustomed to. “I couldn’t find travel companies that were providing luxury to people who looked like me—most of the market offering that targeted people of color was predominantly budget travel—even still today. I wanted to share my love of luxury and epic experiences at an affordable price with excellent customer service,” Soares told Black Enterprise . While Soares came into the business with her own expertise and personal experience, she still found it difficult to navigate a space where her counterparts didn’t look...

According to a comprehensive study entitled Women and Girls of Color in Computing , U.S. women obtain less than 20 percent of college degrees in computer science, and minority women make up less than 10 percent of women earning undergraduate degrees in the field. While the numbers tell one story, they fail to showcase a more troublesome tale of the barriers to access that lurk behind them. Barriers like these are precisely what Wonder Women Tech Founder Lisa Mae Brunson is seeking to deconstruct. During her childhood, Brunson, who is Black and Latina, observed barriers to opportunity firsthand. “I knew I was capable of great things, but not having that support meant that I lacked access to opportunity,” said Brunson. Seeing the inequities in her own world made Brunson want to make a difference in adulthood. “My mom told me that as a child, I walked around saying, ‘I want to change the world,’” she said. When she grew up, Brunson went about doing just that. In 2014, Brunson...

According to a 2015 report from PwC , millennials lack the financial education that they need to thrive in today’s world. The report found that over 40 percent of millennials relied heavily on costly payday loans and rent-to-own financing alternatives, and more than 20 percent made withdrawals from their retirement accounts. While parents may shake their heads at these figures, Kevon L. Chisolm, Esq. is one parent who believes the solution is simple — start early. Chisolm, who is president of Umoja Investments, LLC, began teaching his 11-year-old son , Kamari Chisolm, about finances at an early age. The need to share this knowledge with other young people led the father-and-son duo to establish Black Wallstreeter Consultation Services in 2019. The company works with schools to increase youth knowledge of building and retaining wealth through investments and other means. “It is important for youth to learn about how to build financial wealth and investing, because the sooner...

This piece originally published on March 29, 2019 Persisting stigmas around mental health can make it difficult for Black youth to receive the help they need. They’re often forced to navigate misconceptions within their communities and anti-Blackness within the medical industry. One North Carolina based grad student is using tech to erase some of those barriers. Henry Willis, a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Clinical Psychology Graduate Program, is developing a mental health app for Black youth. Finding ways to provide Black youth mental health resources is an absolute necessity.  Everyday factors of being Black — like exposure to racism — can drastically impact people’s mental health. This is something Willis himself noticed in his own research. “I’ve published papers that have looked at how things such as online racial discrimination can lead to increased PTSD symptoms, or how positive racial identity beliefs can lead to better mental health over...