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Lynne Patton, regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and wannabe Real Housewife of PG County, decided to take time from her busy schedule hawking her right-wing reality show to add to the din of Republicans stoking the flames of bigotry against freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
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The Haiti Tech Summit is back for its third annual conference and changes are in full effect. Founded in 2017, the Haiti Tech Summit has featured the likes of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Facebook investor Ben Horowitz, venture capital investor Tim Draper, and Haiti President Jovenel Moise.
The summit has generated tangible impact-driven items for both the public and private sectors. According to the 2017 Haiti Tech Summit Impact Report, the summit has played a key role in helping Airbnb close a 5-year agreement with the Ministry of Tourism; Facebook launch the country’s first internationally recognized developer community; and facilitating the launch of Google Launchpad’s accelerator program to source and support the country’s leading startups. Furthermore, the president of Haiti announced the country’s first national incubator for entrepreneurs to be located in the nation’s capital, Port Au Prince. The incubator—Alpha Haiti—launched the first week of June.
The goal of the summit is to continue to advance Haiti as a major tech hub center. The summit was founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur Christine Souffrant Ntim and has set out to be a 13-year initiative of the Global Startup Ecosystem (GSE), which brings together hundreds of entrepreneurs, investors, digital marketers, and creatives to Haiti to accelerate tech, innovation, and economic development within the country. The aim is to turn Haiti into the world’s next major tech innovation hub by 2030.
“We announced Haiti’s first official startup ecosystem map,” said Ntim. “This was a huge announcement last month and really transformed people’s perception of Haiti and its ability to become a tech hub by 2030. We are now the official source for identifying and validating the ecosystem that emerged over the past few years”.
Haiti Tech Ecosystem (Image: Haiti Tech Summit)
The theme for this year’s agenda is “The 4th Industrial Revolution – Accelerating Haiti & Emerging Markets into the Digital Age,” focusing on industry disruptions in robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, and more. Click here for more info.
The post This Tech Summit Continues to Spearhead Innovation in Haiti appeared first on Black Enterprise.
It doesn’t feel like summer until I get to sit outside on a warm night. Sure, I run the risk of getting 30 mosquito bites, but if I have a good book and there is a nice breeze, it is all worth it. If you’re like me and equate summer with eating watermelon on your patio set, you’re in luck. Target is currently running…
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Years before integration was legal in the United States, Jackie Robinson, at 28 years old, changed history by stepping onto Ebbets Field in 1947 and breaking Major League Baseball’s more than 50-year color barrier. The baseball legend also used his platform to advocate for the civil rights of African Americans well after his retirement.
In honor of the 100-year anniversary of Robinson’s life, Budweiser partnered with the Jackie Robinson Foundation to create a short film called Impact, produced by Oscar Award-winning director Spike Lee and narrated by Robinson’s daughter, Sharon Robinson. According to Budweiser reps, the film was inspired by Robinson’s quote, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” The beer company has also raised funds in support of the Jackie Robinson Museum, which is scheduled to open in New York City in December. [Watch Budweiser’s Impact film below.]
Black Enterprise spoke with Sharon Robinson about her father’s impact, working with Budweiser, and being the daughter of an American hero.
BE: How was your experience working with Budweiser on this film?
Robinson: It was an incredible experience working with Spike Lee and his team and the Budweiser Group. Everybody was very enthusiastic and creative in finding ways to keep the campaign contemporary while celebrating the accomplishments of Jackie Robinson and the breakthrough from 1947. We are thrilled they partnered with us; they are providing us great support with our museum. Spike was just a dream to work with. I was very honored that he asked me to do the voice for the Impact film.
BE: What was it like growing up in a baseball household?
Robinson: Well, I wouldn’t say I grew up in a baseball household. I was actually 7 when my father retired. My younger brother was about 4-and-a-half, and my older brother was about 9-and-a-half. We grew up more in a civil rights household. We knew our dad had played baseball, we had a trophy room, and people told us stories wherever we went. We really focused, as a family, on social changes during a time when so much was happening and eventually found our role as a family in the civil rights movement.
BE: Aside from being a trailblazer in the world of sports, what were some of Jackie’s contributions off the field?
Robinson: My dad retired in 1957 after 10 years. He was a vice president at Chock Full O’ Nuts but he had a deal with them that he can work in the civil rights movement and he was free to travel, he was able to have the time off to have a dual role. So, initially, he was fundraising for the NAACP and he would travel across the country raising money. He would travel south and we, as a family, intergraded [the] neighborhood we lived in; my brothers and I integrated our schools in Stanford, Connecticut. He would come home and share stories with us at the dining room table, and we would watch the news together as the civil rights movement was unfolding. In 1962, my dad would go on marches, he marched with Dr. King, he marched around jobs, he did a lot of that kind of activism.
Another key role my dad had played was [after] the bombing of the churches. My dad would go down and visit and help raise money to rebuild these churches. In fact, Dr. King had given him the entailment to raise money for the bombings across the country. He visited dad in Albany, Georgia, where there have been a couple of bombings and Dr. King had asked him if he would take that on as one of his fundraisers.
In 1963, things sort of changed in our family. Dad came home and said, ‘We’re going to have a family mission in finding work that you love.’ That’s when we started doing jazz concerts at our home to raise money for the civil right movements. Our very first jazz concert came after the work in Birmingham, Alabama; we raised bail money for the marchers who have been jailed. We had our second jazz concert in September right after the March on Washington. That’s when we, as a family, started doing activism, it became a family mission. That’s why it was so easy after dad died, we moved from our work in the civil rights movement to starting the Jackie Robinson Foundation and gearing our efforts toward education and leadership development.
Jackie Robinson and his daughter Sharon Robinson
BE: What are some of the recent activities going on at the Jackie Robinson Foundation?
Robinson: Currently we have almost 240 scholars who receive financial support for college and have mentorship support throughout their college years. We bring them all to New York for about four days in March; they take mentoring to another level, they attend workshops, go to cultural activities throughout NYC, and it cumulates at our annual Gala, where they dress up and play a role in the program itself and the leadership component. We just completed that networking weekend, it was great. Our alumni also participate in that conference, they also help with mentoring with scholars during that time.
BE: What should we expect to see at the Jackie Robinson Museum once it opens?
Robinson: We will we certainly see his baseball career in the museum; none of this would have happened if he did not have this tremendous career that created change within the sport and within the country. That part of the legacy was definitely not lost as we were children, it was very much there. In the museum, there will be a section on baseball accomplishments and ways kids can interact and learn how to slide, steal a home run, [along with] educational activities around baseball. What we are really hoping is to challenge young people to think about issues of race, diversity, globalization, finding your voice, all of that will be a large part of what we are going to be doing at the museum. So it’s really helping them move from Jackie Robinson in the past to what is happening in their lives, which is exactly what impact does: It doesn’t just stay in 1947, it shows what happened in 1947, continues to impact America today.
BE: What is the impact you want the Jackie Robinson Museum to have on the public?
Robinson: The impact we are hoping is that we will help children lift their voice against discrimination of all kinds and we will support that in that effort and show them our father was an activist as well as a baseball player and how he used his fame to impact others.
Sharon Robinson’s answers were edited for brevity and clarity.
The post Jackie Robinson’s Daughter on Carrying on Her Father’s Legacy and Working With Budweiser appeared first on Black Enterprise.
Run — don’t walk — to take advantage of this Adidas Flash Event at Nordstrom Rack before the best styles sell out. Right now, new kicks and apparel for men, women, and kids are on sale, so you’ll definitely find the things you need take you over the finish line this spring.
Like a rapper that knows an explosive diss track is about to be released, the president of the United States is playing reduced-stress checkers—in which they’re only six pieces on the board to prevent confusion (but he still cheats)—by releasing tweets that will help his followers know his position on the…
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It feels like we’ve polled our readers about everything but the kitchen sink at this point, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do this week. Or rather, the kitchen faucet. We’re not as concerned about finishes as we are about features and brands here, so head down to the comments and let your recommendations flow.
Flags were flown at half-staff Monday in Westfield, N.J., and a funeral is set for Tuesday to honor a beloved principal who lapsed into a monthlong coma and died after donating bone marrow for a boy in France he’d never even met.
La-Van Hawkins, a black entrepreneur in the food industry, just died at the age of 61, reports Crain’s. Hawkins was featured several times in BLACK ENTERPRISE magazine. In 1995, his business, La-Van Hawkins Inner City Foods, ranked No. 45 on the BE 100s listing of the nation’s most successful black-owned businesses. At the time, the business had sales totaling $39.1 million. His company then operated 36 Checkers drive-in restaurants.
He raised eyebrows in an interview with BE asserting that he would sell his company for the right price. This was during a time when the movement for black-owned companies to remain in black hands was gaining traction.
“Blacks go to white companies and white banking institutions for cash because black capital companies don’t fund black ventures,” he said in the interview. Hawkins also said he would definitely sell his company “if the price was right, but only if the new owners would continue to bring jobs to our community.” His company employed 1,500 people at the time.
According to Crain’s, Hawkins grew up in the Chicago projects and never finished high school. Yet he found entrepreneurial success in Atlanta as a fast food mogul—owning and operating several Burger King franchises in addition to his Checkers franchises. He eventually moved his business operations to Detroit and became the largest Pizza Hut franchisee in Michigan.
Hawkins went on to open a high-end, Southern-food restaurant, Sweet Georgia Brown, in downtown Detroit. The restaurant launched in 2002 and garnered $8.5 million in business according to Encyclopedia.com.
Hawkins also ran into legal troubles. He served 18 months in federal prison for perjury and fraud associated with a corruption case in Philadelphia. Undaunted by the conviction, Hawkins would go on to launch Detroit’s Cheesecake Bistro in 2012. The restaurant closed in 2013.
“The 18 months is probably the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life because what it did was it allowed God to humble me,” he said about his conviction in an interview with Blac Detroit.
“See, the transformation and the change that God needs to do on the inside of you can’t take place until he puts you through something. … So in my process of becoming gold, God had to refine me. And those 18 months were the refinement that he told me what it was that he wanted me to do. He told me the assignment that he has me on.”
The family will hold a funeral service on Sunday, April 14 at the James H. Cole Home for Funerals in Detroit.
The post Fast Food Mogul, Serial Entrepreneur La-Van Hawkins Dies at 61 appeared first on Black Enterprise.
Creating shockwaves throughout the African American community, Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Co., the once-iconic publishing company that for years had been one of the nation’s largest black-owned business, filed for bankruptcy yesterday. After years of trying to remake the former BE 100s company that launched such brands as Ebony and Jet magazines, it succumbed after failing to find new funding sources.
The liquidation of its assets marks the end of an era.
According to the Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition, filed in the Northern District of Illinois, JPC has between 200 and 999 creditors, as well as between $10 million and $50 million in both assets and liabilities. In making the announcement, the company said in a press release that it was “caught in a tidal wave of marketplace changes and business issues which, despite exhaustive efforts, could not be overcome.”
Over the years, financial troubles forced the firm to sell major assets. In 2016, the company sold Ebony and Jet magazines to Texas-based private equity firm CVG Group LLC, which still manages those media properties, and sold its headquarters in 2010. The company, which still owns the Fashion Fair cosmetics business as well as an expansive archive of about 4 million images and thousands of videos, will place those properties on the auction block.
For close to 50 years, BLACK ENTERPRISE has covered the company, founded in 1942 by John H. Johnson, who was named one of the most important African Americans in business. Under Johnson’s stewardship, JPC’s publications touched the lives of millions of African Americans in every facet of life, sharing with the world their talents and potential, exposing injustice and racism, and shattering social and commercial barriers.
Johnson Publishing Founder John H. Johnson
BE named Johnson its Entrepreneur of the Decade in 1987 for building JPC into a global powerhouse, chronicled as one of the greatest moments in black business in 2017. That article noted that the founder, chairman, and publisher of the storied enterprise served as an inspirational force for generations of African American entrepreneurs:
As an eager young man, Johnson got his start when his mother used her furniture as collateral for a $500 loan to start his first publication, Negro Digest, in 1942, which served as the launching pad for him to create the largest African American publishing company in the world. Seemingly, there wasn’t a single African American household in late 20th century America in which you could not find a copy of Ebony or Jet on the coffee table. And to share the impact his publications had, one can point to a powerful example that predates his inclusion on the BE 100s by roughly two decades that BE shared in our October 2005 tribute on this legendary force:
In September 1955, Johnson made a decision that forever shook the world. Not one to vacillate on any issue, he revealed to millions the mutilated corpse of Emmett Till, a Chicago youngster who had been bludgeoned and shot in Mississippi for reportedly whistling at a white woman. Readers found the heinous example of Jim Crow-brutality on the pages of Jet, Johnson’s 4-year-old weekly news digest. Shortly thereafter, other black publications followed Jet’s lead in publishing the photos. It galvanized clusters of African Americans nationwide to protest such senseless acts of violence. In one bold move, the determined 37-year-old publisher helped launch the civil rights movement.
That was but one example of Johnson’s power. For six decades, he made full use of his wealth and influence to shape American history, while using his publications—primarily Jet and his flagship, Ebony—to cover the battle for civil rights and chronicle every major event that depicted the trials and triumphs of African Americans.
By 1987, when he was fittingly honored on the 15th anniversary of the rankings of the nation’s largest black businesses at a gala in downtown Manhattan, this rugged individualist had built an empire that touched the lives of millions through publications, radio stations, television programs, fashion shows, and haircare and cosmetic products. He also owned Supreme Life Insurance Co., his former employer and one of the nation’s largest black financial services firms listed on the BE INSURANCE COMPANIES list. In addition to his collection of companies, Johnson held a 20% stake in another iconic BE 100s company: Essence Communications Inc., publisher of the black women’s magazine Essence.
How did he do it? It took sweat, intellect, and moxie. When the company first appeared on our list in 1973, JPC grossed $23.1 million. In 1987, it had grown to an enterprise that grossed $173.5 million and employed 1,800 people. Despite its size and stature, it was still very much a family-owned business: His wife, Eunice, among other areas, ran the Fashion Fair cosmetics line, and his daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, rose through the ranks to eventually take its helm.
Linda Johnson Rice
In sharing his greatest inspiration as an entrepreneur, he said: In a broad sense, I admire any black man who succeeds. There are so many obstacles throughout life that I am surprised that black businessmen have done as well as they have. I guess I am inspired by every black man who meets payroll, every black man who continues to overcome barriers and beat the odds.
The post With Bankruptcy Filing, An End of An Era at Johnson Publishing appeared first on Black Enterprise.
