In honor of Black History Month, I wanted to take a moment to honor Black Women Entrepreneurs that have made differences in our lives. According to Forbes, black women represent 42% of new women-owned businesses, which is three times their share of the female population and 36% of all Black-owned employer businesses. As black women have attained higher levels of education, as well as overcoming barriers to corporate advancement many of them have decided to pursue entrepreneurship.
I wanted to highlight a few Women that started their own businesses by trying to solve the problems that many of us were looking to solve.
In 2016, after much frustration by the lack of options within the world of clean sunscreen products, she decided to create here own version of clean sunscreen products for women of color. Katonya insisted on only using clean ingredients such as Vitamin E, Coconut Oil, and five different fruit extracts. She created Unsun Cosmetics to be able to provide clean, no-residue options that were kind to the person using it as well as the environment that it was being used in. In her research she found that creating clean products were cost prohibitive. It took her three years, but she never gave up and made it happen.
They met when they were freshman at Temple University. Sharing similar passions, they connected quickly and created Aqua Waterproof Headwear. They both enjoy wearing their hair in different styles that would take time, effort and financial resources to maintain their hairstyles. They wanted to protect their investments, so they began researching waterproof headwear. Their passion of solving problems and helping people is what allowed them to start their company based on these two goals.
Brittany started More Than Cheer in 2007 when she was a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University, there she cheered competitively and for the basketball team. After college, she tried out for the Ravens and spent the 2013 season cheering for the National Football League team. Here mission is to dismantle demeaning stereotype about cheerleading and make it a tool for empowering women. More Than Cheer focuses on helping students develop leadership skills, self-esteem, self-confidence, and increase their athletic ability through the sports of cheerleading and dance.
These women have proven that when you set your mind to it you can do anything. Although there are many challenges that one may face you just keep moving forward. If you are a Black Women that is looking to start your own business I would love to hear from you.
Margherita C. Amplo
President, MCA Consultants
Email: Margherita@mcacs.us
