I have been working for over a year on this incredible project that has been taking so much of my focus and in so so many ways feels incredibly full circle to me. Anyone who has read my book Wildflower: A Memoir, or has been with me since the early years knows just how hard I had to work bootstrapping my own business and meeting with countless investors along the way. Most of them really just never got ‘it’ or me, to be honest. But the data also shows this to be the case. Black businesses are not being funded.

When I launched the Fifteen Percent Pledge I knew that access to capital to scale Black businesses would be the single largest barrier to entry in us completing this mission. And while countless VC firms and big banks were making promises to ‘support the Black community’ I didn’t know that I could trust them to get the job done or that Black founders would trust them to let them into their businesses. So, in 2021 I set out to learn how to be the investor I would have dreamed of having when I was starting out. It’s been so important to me to get into the weeds and do the actual work before talking about it. So I apologize for not sharing earlier, but there’s so much more to come!!

A big thank you to Alisa and Mike and everyone at the VMG Partners family for being such huge supporters of me, 15PP and the incredible founders we’ve been journeying with already. Nothing about this is charity, Black business is the future of America. Happy Juneteenth Friends 🖤

Read the announcement here!