Welcome back to closing bell on Cheddar news,
her black history month cheddar is highlighting black and business leaders
who are driving the need for representation of for work.
The U. S.
Chamber of Commerce hosting an event last week
called developing the black owned business ecosystem.
The virtual event was organized under the lobbying groups to initiatives,
the equality of opportunity initiative and
the coalition to back black businesses.
It aimed to highlight the developments needed to
develop more black owned businesses in the US.
And joining me now is one of the speakers at the event, Anthony Wilbon,
dean of the School of Business at Howard University uh
Anthony thank you so much for coming on the show.
Talk to me about your experience at this event
and the resources that it provided to current and prospective
black business owners.
Thanks for having me chris um Yes this this was I
think a very significant event because it allowed us to bring together
a group of folks who are in the
entire ecosystem of entrepreneurship and kind of talk through
some of the issues and challenges with the intent of
trying to build up and sustain african american businesses.
I mean when you think about an ecosystem where you're talking about is really
a complex network of of entities that
are brought together to build this infrastructure
and I think they had all the right players in the room,
Everyone from people in academia to government
uh small businesses
and we all kind of got together and talked about what what was needed
and what we need to do invest in in order to build this infrastructure.
And I know you were one of several speakers um Anthony
at this event and so what specifically did you speak about?
So Howard University school business has had
a long track record of supporting entrepreneurship.
We we have a small business development center here that's uh sponsored by the S. P.
A. And it's actually the District of Columbia Small business development center,
but we also just received some pretty significant funding from PST
to build a center for entrepreneurship
uh and it's going to be a kind of through a network of all the hbcu in the country,
with Howard being the hub
with the intent of sharing information, providing resources
giving small businesses and communities across the
country access to understanding how to how to
do everything from developing a business plan to to identify the access to capital.
So you know, we have a contribution that we've been making for quite some time,
so we can kind of talk through what those contributions have been,
what we're planning for in the future
and how we can continue to support businesses to grow and sustain themselves. Mhm.
What developments uh Anthony are needed for there to
be more black owned businesses here in the US.
Well again,
I think it's important to recognize as you probably
are aware small businesses are the engine of this country
more than 90% and probably closer to 95% of the
businesses in this country are less than 20 people.
Um and so african american businesses are just as much of an important part of this,
this infrastructure that we need to build,
so investing in them and and not only starting them, but
giving them uh the ability to sustain themselves
and information to sustain themselves is critically important.
And I think most important too, that is for african american businesses.
One of the things we need to address
is the whole issue of risk management and and risk mitigation.
Uh One of the challenges that kind of keep people
from jumping into this space is the fear of,
of risk and losing everything that they have.
The pandemic has kind of pushed people along the line a little
bit to give them more confidence in in building these businesses,
but also,
I think technology and the gig economy and those kinds
of things that have also opened the door for people
to realize that it is the possibility to do something
on your own and be successful in doing it.
So I think we just need to provide continued support around
that so that we can make sure these businesses are successful.
How is Howard University,
your School of Business attempting to prepare these future business leaders?
We invest a lot in our students, I think one of the,
one of the most important things uh for a student,
uh particularly they want to start their own
businesses to have a degree of confidence.
So not only do we invest in developing the
technical skills that students need from a business perspective,
we also give them some of the softer skills, understanding how to negotiate how to,
how to walk into a room with your head high
and and make the ask and make the pitch that's
gonna allow you to be successful and win what you
need to win in order to get your business thriving.
Um, so we put a lot into that.
We also spend a lot of time in developing partnerships at the corporate level.
We have a number of corporate partners who have invested in all
the things that we do from our programming to centers to,
to the curriculum.
Um,
and so we try to build that bridge between what needs to happen
in the classroom and what happens in practice so that students can understand,
uh, you know, how they can make that leap from
from the classroom into the practical space for business world.
And so, experiential learning is a big part of what we do,
and we've been doing that for quite some time, and we're building on that,
as we speak.
I think that real world experience certainly does help build confidence,
which I know is the name,
Your university, as you mentioned there.
So,
the Marriott Foundation recently donated $20 million dollars
to Howard University to build a pipeline of students
for leadership roles, How is the university working with Marriott on this?
This was a very significant investment by Marriott and and I think
a very important uh contribution to what we're trying to do.
Uh there's a great uh limited of
number of diverse executives in the hospitality world
um and hospital and Marriott recognizes that
all the other entities and the big firms
recognize that.
And so what was important for us was to try to build a program that's gonna allow us
to develop students to enter the pipeline into the management and leadership track
and hospitality.
Um even though we, you know, African Americans make up,
I think around 19% of the of the operational jobs in hospitality,
But less than 5% of the executive suite
as people of color.
Um less than 1% were of the CEOS of people of colour.
So I think they recognize the need to have
that diversity in their boardrooms and in their decision making
and how and mary I came to us to build this senator
whereby we're going to give the students
specialized internships and training and boot camps
so that they can graduate and actually launch
themselves into a mid level management on a track
to the executive suite versus starting at the
low level operational jobs and working way of,
so we think this is gonna be very impactful and very successful.
Good, I'm glad to hear it.
And and are those roles expected to be at Marriott is Marriott expected
to provide those roles at the end of some of these internships,
Marriott will be an important player, but this is a much broader initiative.
When we started the design of this, we wanted to include all aspects of hospitality,
so we've had all the people who are involved in this,
including not only the hotel and restaurant space, but everywhere,
everywhere from google travel
to Airbnb, bed and breakfast places, technology spaces,
all sectors of hospitality are recognizing that this is important.
So although Marianne is an important contributor to the initial seed of this,
we think that all companies recognize the need and we have
gotten great support from across all parts of the aspects of hospitality
Anthony will bond dean of the School of Business at Howard University.
We so appreciate you taking the time. Thank you again for joining.