Triple Pundit: The Business of Doing Better

How an Ecosystem of Support Changes the Playing Field for Businesses of Color

Triple Pundit Article Excerpt
Words by Glynn LloydAugust 6, 2021

In 2017, the Foundation for Business Equity (FBE) was created to help address the widening income and wealth gap in Greater Boston experienced most acutely by Black and Latinx communities. We focus on scaling businesses of color to create greater wealth for business owners and more jobs with family-sustaining wages in our urban communities.

The racial wealth gap experienced today is the result of a steady accumulation of unfortunate public and private sector actions and policies over centuries. At FBE, we believe that to truly create collaborative ecosystems and programs that remove structural barriers, we must identify, acknowledge, and address each tier of a system that has adversely affected people of color for hundreds of years. At FBE, we recognize:

History: Business and wealth disparities for communities of color are part of American history. The institution of slavery and colonization of Caribbean and Latin American nations, followed by the Jim Crow laws and redlining, are some of the aggregated reasons that have led to disparities of wealth and differently resourced social networks for Black and Latinx business owners.  

Leadership with lived experience makes a difference: Our organization’s leaders represent the entrepreneurs we work with. We understand the challenges of the small business ecosystem, specifically for entrepreneurs and businesses of color, because we are entrepreneurs ourselves. This provides a unique vantage point in identifying opportunities to bring in resources where they are needed the most to help business owners of color succeed. This allows us to have frank discussions up front about co-investing in the process of growth….

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