 Welcome, welcome, welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg and I'm here joined by my colleague, Raul Moaz, the Miami program director from Knight Foundation. Hi, Raul, how are you? Hello, doing well yourself? Doing well. How's the family? How's everyone doing? Good, we had a really nice Christmas break where we kind of disconnected from everything. And then that first Zoom in January reminded us that we're very much still in COVID work from home mode. But thankfully, we're all good. You all up there? We're all good over here. And one of my New Year's resolution was actually to do a little bit less Zooms, to pick up the phone sometimes. So we'll see if that works. But listen, as you know, Coast to Coast, we started Knight Foundation talking about really the future of cities when COVID hit in March. And we've talked about all sorts of topics from the future of public spaces to mobility to technology and everything in between. And today I'm really excited to talk about entrepreneurship. We know that COVID has disrupted everything. And I see many articles, almost every day, Raul coming out about Miami and entrepreneurship. We go back and forth with this and kind of the mobility of talent. But I think there's a real question of how do we build an entrepreneurial community that's inclusive and accessible to all? And so I'm really excited about this topic. Would love for you to tee up what we're going to be talking about and who our special guests are. Absolutely. So thank you so much for the space, for always grabbing amazing folks to go into the nitty gritty and into the hard question. So I think today will be no different. We've got two amazing, incredibly accomplished people with us today. So the intro will be very short because we have a very short amount of time. I'm not naming all of our accomplishments nor roles, maybe just the headlines. But today we have with us Felicia Hatcher, who is the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Black Innovation, and Rosabeth Moss Cantor, who's the founding chair and director of Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. And what we want to get into today is this question of how is it that communities across the country, especially in light of COVID and as they think about rebuilding and building forward, and can ensure that that building forward happens in a way where all can participate, right? So we're talking about building prosperous entrepreneurial ecosystems, prosperous entrepreneurial communities that meet people where they're at and give them the opportunities to build companies that improve livelihoods, that improve community well-being, and ultimately make them more resilient. And so Rosabeth, Felicia, thank you so much for being with us today. Hello, hello. So we wanted to kick off just with a general kind of challenge or prompt here. That is to say, when we think of the work that you all are doing and theories around how we can build inclusive and accessible entrepreneurial communities, oftentimes the conversations are maybe a little bit feel good or they're values-based, but we don't get into the nitty gritty of what are the real hard sticking points and what are the frameworks that we can use to measure against the values, measure against the progress we're making towards those values and those desired outcomes. So Rosabeth, probably we can start with you. Could you give us a context of your frameworks and you think of what do you measure for when you're looking at a community and asking whether it is working for all, especially in a startup community? And if you can maybe give us also a little bit on the fore end and how does that community can use that framework to measure their progress. Well, let me start with the fore end. And I also want to say thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. And I'm a particular fan of Felicia's work and I think this will be an exciting conversation. So the fore end are four things that you have to watch out for. And if we don't get them right, we're not going to be inclusive. The first end is numbers. And by numbers I mean how many people of a particular kind are in leadership circles or not. Because if we only have a few token entrepreneurs of color or of a different gender, that means women, then we're not going to break through particularly. Because if you're small in numbers, you have extra burdens to carry. You have to represent your group. You have to show up at every meeting or also won't be anybody from your group. Your difference is always there in front of you. So we have to get rid of tokenism. What we need is balanced groups of people of many kinds together. And so any program needs to make sure that we don't just have a sprinkling of few tokens here and there. It just starts with that, it's fundamental. Second end is narratives. The narratives can't be deficit narratives. Oh, let's help those poor people. Let's give them an opportunity. They should be asset narratives that say they're people with talent and how are we going to put those people with talent together? So another thing every effort in this thing should do is to elevate the stature of people in underrepresented, less representative groups and show off their talents, not show off their complaints. I mean, let's vent if there needs to be venting, but not too much of it. The third end is networks. Networks are incredibly important. Networks are the way you access all the resources needed to build and grow a business. You access capital through networks, whether it's banks or venture capitalists, you've got to know the people. They have to know you access expertise through networks, and that might include mentors. But mentors have some limitations because it's really sponsorship that matters. You access through networks legitimacy, that you're at the table and therefore you're somebody to be reckoned with. And unless the networks are inclusive themselves and balanced, unfortunately, people can have support networks. They can even have a mentor, but it doesn't take them anywhere. They need networks that give them access to resources they wouldn't otherwise have. So networks have to be wide open to the world outside one's particular neighborhood or a particular group. And the fourth end is new institutions because one of the things that holds people back are the structures, the institutions that we have today. Like, how long is the commute from your part of the city to where the incubator happens to be? What kind of transportation is available? How about access to health care or childcare? How about even bike sharing? It turns out bike sharing is more prevalent in more affluent communities and not in communities of color. Interesting because that should be an easy one. Marketing platforms. I mean, they're a woman entrepreneur in my area who is building a marketing platform for businesses of people of color. Where do those exist and is the narrative positive? Will we get them in enough numbers and will that help build networks? That's the challenge. Which is a founding executive director and of the Center for Black Innovation, which is new-ish, but it's a long time coming. She's also a past, long time, and recent night grantee for that work. Felicia, could you give us some history, some background on the work you've been doing over the last decade that led to the creation of the institution that is the Center for Black Innovation? And what it is that in terms of market positioning, what is that the Center for Black Innovation is aiming to do? What gap is it filling in the institutional landscape or continuum to Roosevelt's point of their being institutions that meet folks where they're at? Right, right. I'm excited to be having this conversation with you guys. Center for Black Innovation is a rebrand to the work that we've been doing for the past six years. And so largely people are familiar with Code Fever and also Black Tech Week. All of our work for the past six years has really been around ridding black communities from being innovation deserts. And so most of us are really familiar with what food deserts are, right? People having to travel miles, often time to get access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Well, the same thing was happening from an access point, largely this conversation, right? Access for entrepreneurship, for tech professionals, for businesses and our small businesses overall, but specifically as it relates to black communities being able to be active participants and financial beneficiaries of the innovation economy. And so the rebrand as a name really just came from having kind of clarity to the work that we've been doing for the past six years, but then also really being able to take that forward, right? And so some of the things that Roosevelt mentioned was around data and networks, right? And knowing that there's a huge disconnect and a huge gap for entrepreneurs period, but then when you're talking about technology, entrepreneurs, that gap is even wider, right? And so for us, it's really, we are largely a think tank now, so really tackling the research component in an area in a way that we have not seen anyone do that responsibly from an asset framing standpoint as opposed to a deficit deficit framing standpoint or another disparity study, right? And then the other part of that is black innovation, ecosystem building organization, and our understanding is that smart cities and communities are formed by cultivating great leaders, great entrepreneurs and real capital pathways that value black culture and communities as a greatest asset. And so when we talk about media and what that can do to drastically increase the social capital to get more eyeballs on entrepreneurs, specifically with those that can accelerate what they're doing, we don't see responsible storytelling of black entrepreneurs in that way. And so pushing the needle forward with that, but then also giving them the right kind of data to do better storytelling is one big aspect of our think tank in center for black innovation, right? The other part about networks. Networks are important, we always hear people say, you're what your network is your net worth, but if your network or the networks are hard to access or hard to penetrate, it doesn't mean anything for you. And we have so many people that are building, kind of have their head down, building really great companies and solutions that don't have a network or disconnected or are largely not trusted by their cities. And so the introductions aren't happening. And that's what we've been doing over the past four years with VC and residents is giving entrepreneurs largely their first connection point to a VC where our organization can make that warm introduction for them and then hold that relationship accountable. So it's not this thing where they kind of ghost the entrepreneur, but they actually help them do what they said that they're going to do and better position them. And then aside from that is creating better capital pathways for black entrepreneurs through that program through an angel investor accreditation program that we're adding to that and then just space in general, right? So we have a 10,000 square foot space in the historic overtown area of Miami that is a beacon for entrepreneurship and innovation and is literally the only center for black innovation across the board. So Felicia, you've hit on a couple of things. I'd love to get to kind of the nitty gritty that the hard truths, the uncomfortable truths sometimes that then you get overlooked. A lot of communities, a lot of individuals are seeking to live out their values of building inclusive accessible entrepreneurial communities. But that journey is not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen even in a couple of years, right? It's a long, long journey. And there's going to be pitfalls and kind of road bumps along the way. Could you highlight for us maybe two or three of the most common kind of pitfalls, common missteps or ways that folks kind of veer off the path and kind of distractions, if you will, that don't let them kind of get to where we want to get to. And Roosevelt, afterwards, I love your reaction to what Felicia shares as well. Yeah, I mean, and we've had a lot of conversations around this over the years, Raul. I think that the first part of that is actually doing an honest assessment of your city. You know, what is the marketing shiny stuff? And then what are the real realities and prior to the beginning of 2020 was a whole other conversation where we were still trying to map out the best resources to move things forward, being able to measure that and then duplicate that, and then COVID happened. And there's been a bunch of studies that have talked about like, you know, 40% of black businesses have closed and may not reopen again. And so whatever we were trying to do before then has now further been exacerbated by COVID. And so one is definitely having an honest assessment. And then two, I think it's really looking at the sheer amount of resources that are needed in order to start even beginning to tackle systematic like generational trauma in those communities, distress in those communities, and then like a lack of resources. And so I'm always gonna center about like, let's have real conversations about where we are, move away the marketability of what we need to do sometimes into our sell things so that we can actually start having conversations on what are the right type of resources that are needed specific to every city that we are talking about. And there is no one-size-fit all around that. And Amen. Rosabeth, your thoughts? So I think very wise thoughts, and I think that the institutional structural problems have to be tackled somehow. First of all, there are people who would like to start and grow businesses, they may enroll in courses, they can get training. On the other hand, they also have to hold a job. They have family responsibilities, they have impossible commutes. So unless there are enough social supports and it looks like the current, the new administration in Washington is thinking about those social supports, you're not going to be able to get it. So what you have is more people dropping out of community college programs where they would be getting skills and they would be getting contacts because they don't have the social supports around them. And then I just want to underscore the network and connections problem again, that there are incredibly savvy black, for example, business people, and they are not in the social circles with all the bankers in town. They start to be, but it stops at a certain point. And again, partly that's residential patterns. So we have to situate the incubators, for example, in places that are equally accessible to affluent and left behind populations. That's incredibly important. And we have to, so that's gonna make sure that they're inclusive. I know that in Miami, there's one that's doing green tech and it's located in a heavily black area. So it's a, but it's green tech, which is a very hot field. So it's attracting people to that incubator in a black neighborhood because of the theme green tech. So I think that black and brown communities have to have resources and assets to offer other people, rather than only being the recipients of help. So maybe grants, so that they get to give out the money to somebody else. I mean, if you want to see somebody that's your rise in an organization or a community, let them control the budget. So that's, so we're two things I'd like to do. One, I'd like to remind folks who are participating with either by Facebook, YouTube, live through here, Twitter, we have a kind of a Q and A kind of elements. So feel free to drop in questions. If you have a question for Felicia or Roosevelt, feel free to drop it in. And can you all hear me all right? Yeah. Perfect, just making sure. We're testing out a new system, folks. I appreciate you all bearing with us. And then the second thing I wanted to do is kind of then kind of flip this a bit and discuss opportunities. It's been a cluster of a year, challenging on so many levels for so many different reasons. That has also unlocked opportunity. Are there silver linings or are there genuine opportunities, systemic opportunities that you're seeing in communities? That was the best touch on the national level, but I kind of want to bring it back to the local level because these commitments have to happen locally, as Felicia mentioned, really being honest about what's happening in our places. Where's the opportunity today? And where are we seeing kind of things that give us hope or optimism for there being more access, more inclusion, more equity in the outcomes of entrepreneurial communities? So the thing that gives me the most hope, but it isn't accessible yet to everybody is tech, because like they say, the old joke that on the internet, no one knows you're a dog. That is supposedly tech, if we get rid of biased algorithms, tech is color neutral. And if you have great tech, you can sell it lots of places if you get access and many people would like you to get access. So that's tech. Child care is a huge problem. And it's why women are dropping out of the labor force. I think women and women of color are probably the hardest hit. And that's not around entrepreneurship. That's in general because of being in search about broadband connections into homes. And we have to do a lot of reinventing of things. Now that reinvention, including how we deliver healthcare, neighborhood, clinic, barber shops and hair salons should be delivering some basic services, health services. Those are opportunities. If you think entrepreneurial and you reinvent where and how, imagine if every barber shop and every hair salon could take blood pressure into a system, we would solve a health problem and we would provide more income and more opportunities for the people that own those neighborhood businesses. Yeah, I think we're seeing some opportunities that have come out of COVID or silver linings if we're able to talk about silver linings. One was the heavy adoption and accelerated better understanding of the utility of technology for those that are not in the technology field. We saw that in a way that, I think, largely that conversation, that activity had been swept under the rug. We felt like we were at a level where we were okay. And we realized that we had a huge infrastructure problem. But in those moments, you get more solution-driven entrepreneurs out of that. And so I think given e-commerce became really huge. Not that it wasn't a big thing anyways prior to, but the reliance on e-commerce in order to get products and services, the kind of insurgent of black entrepreneurs that were using platforms like Shopify without having the heavy technology skills in order to get their product to the market, essentially to people really fast with something that we've seen grow dramatically over the past year. I mean, even if you talk about kind of the food and in tech scene, right? And so people kind of laugh at like trap kitchens, which are largely just people cooking out of their homes and selling plates or selling whatever the product is on Instagram. Well, actually a lot of our big established food businesses did not understand that utility, right? Or did not have that kind of understanding from a marketing or logistics standpoint that quite frankly, a lot of black and brown businesses did understand that because they were running these businesses largely underground as side hustles and they were actually ahead of the game in March, February, March, April, May, the beginning of the pandemic. And so what other resources do they need to further grow that because they have a better understanding of how to quickly kind of pivot and utilize digital in a way that some of our larger organizations and corporations just did not? We've also seen growth in like health and beauty, which is a high growth area, low entry point for black businesses specifically around female entrepreneurs that actually did not dip under the past year. People were still taking care of themselves but getting them directly to the consumer was something that we saw strengthened in this past pandemic. And then I think just people starting businesses that are micro businesses really to either help them because they lost their job during the pandemic or to just kind of give themselves the safety net financially just in case something does happen. I think we saw people getting really creative but I think we always see that kind of moment happen in major economic downturns or instability. But I think we've seen in a lot of ways the black community had been affected but in a lot of ways we've seen kind of this insurgent of creativity in businesses that I hope will be here to stay and kind of help us get back to recovering from that 40% dip in black entrepreneurship, businesses that have closed. So I think that it's absolutely true that a lot of creativity comes out of that and we hope those businesses are sustainable but it's hard for them to be sustained when they're really small by themselves then they're vulnerable to every downturn every change. So what we need is more partnerships and on the one hand, the fact that we're working remotely we can talk like this coast to coast means that you can connect people on the other hand, you can't do the face to face making a relationship. So we need more collaborations. We need to have those small neighborhood beauty and health businesses for example connected with others in their city and beyond their city because then they have marketing clout then they can like cooperatives. I mean, some of our food in America still comes from farmers cooperatives where small farmers band together in a cooperative for marketing ocean spray, cranberries and blueberries and other things is a cooperative. So we need more cooperatives. Capitalism needs cooperatives. Yeah. No, I definitely agree. I think kind of measuring this like what are the actual collaborations that makes sense. We're doing collaboration from intention. I think that we throw around very easily the term as ecosystem builders like everyone needs to collaborate. Well, no, what does that collaboration look like? What are the outcomes of that collaboration so that we don't just have outputs and we feel like we're doing something but when we look at the hard numbers we have actually not moved anything forward and we saw that under 2020 of the pandemic and the social justice unrest. Like we saw that, right? And so for us with Center for Black Innovation like we're measuring that, right? Like our framework of how you measure the health of a black tech and startup an entrepreneurial ecosystem comes out next week, right? And so looking at 13 key areas in which not only are we scoring Miami as our first city but like you hopefully other people in other cities use that exact same framework so that they understand where the gaps are and then be very intentional about like what the collaborations, what their resources are, what funding is needed. Cause I don't think we ever get really granular in that aspect when we're talking about communities. And when we, what it was to say like when, kind of like, you know, white America gets cold, black communities get the flu, right? As it relates to how they are largely affected when these kinds of things happen. And so looking at like measuring density, and fluidity and kind of like actual connectivity, you know, what does culture actually look like in the city when we say like specifically in Miami, like everyone for the past six weeks has been talking about how diverse our city is. And then you see an article come out about like, you know, welcome to Miami and here are all the places. It did not list like one black community as a community that you should live in if you're looking to relocate to Miami. It did not list one black restaurant that you could frequent. And we have some really amazing high growth black restaurant that are here. It didn't list one black neighborhood, one black museum, one black author that you should read to get a better understanding of Miami. And so when we're talking about, you know, inclusive innovation and we're talking about communities, but when we market our cities, we're literally not like almost kind of erasing what 17% of the population and 17% of what your lived experience should be or how you should contribute or just like go about the city, like that's a problem because those are missed marketing opportunities for those businesses that could be strengthened by either just that commerce or those investments. And so looking at, you know, talent, of course, mentorship, infrastructure and investment, really the regulatory environment here, not just in South Florida, but throughout the state and then incubator and accelerator and spaces. We have 13 targeted urban areas here in Miami. We have four co-working spaces that exist in black neighborhoods. I actually think only three. And so when we're talking about even all the activity of the past, what, six weeks on Twitter, we're only talking about the city of Miami. We're not talking about the county. And so if you're not talking about the county and bringing those resources or those VCs to concentrate on the county, you're actually not talking about the black community at all because the majority do not live in the city. And so when we're talking about mobility and then of course how everyone measures the start of their ecosystem by the workforce generation of that and then like exits, like we have to have a much broader conversation how we measure things so that we know where to align and put resources. But I think that was beautifully said. Tons of folks commenting. So I don't know if you can see it on your screen there. You got a ton of love coming your way. We're coming up on time, which is crazy. These things always fly by. You hit on something. You hit the cold kind of flu analogy and that there's a question that had to come in at that center on trust. And actually we're gonna go a little deeper into public health here. But basically the asset question, how can businesses promote trust, especially as it relates to kind of COVID vaccination we're in particularly black communities, communities of color, there's a lack of trust or mistrust or distrust around that. So really hot takes quick 30 second hot takes Rosa and Felicia on how businesses can build trust in communities that don't have it as it pertains to our current context of COVID. Ask the community and listen to them. I think it only goes partway to show the vice president of the United States getting the COVID vaccine or another person of color getting the COVID vaccine. Okay, that's not me. You have to ask the community. You have to get trusted opinion leaders in the community to tell you what the barriers are and then work with them. It's their voices that matter. I'm working with an organization in Chicago, a huge collaboration serving 550,000 people in largely black and brown areas and having the community at the table as an equal partner and letting them lead is really important. Yeah, we'll quickly just second what Rosebeth said, right? And so it is definitely asking the community. I think it's also, you know, when we're talking about distrust of the COVID vaccine, everyone immediately points to Henrietta Lacks or the Tuskegee experiment that have happened decades ago, right? But what we're not talking about is the day-to-day experience of black people in the healthcare system today, right? Like there's mistrust that's happening today. And so the fact that doctors and healthcare professionals aren't giving black people pain medication because they feel like they don't experience pain. Like these are real studies and real experiences that are happening today. You see the death rate of black women giving childbirth. Like these things are real realities today. And so it's not to be like forget about Tuskegee and to forget about Henrietta Lacks. We're asking you forget about your experience last week at the doctor's office. And so it has to start there of fixing that. I think it also has to start with a more equitable, like marketing around this as well, which we have not seen really addressing those pain points other than just kind of forget about this thing, trust us in this moment where you have kind of been, not have the best experience in the most recent time. So I definitely say starting there. Rosa, thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you for so sorry to cut you off. Thank you both so much for the real talk, the hard truths, the optimism, inspiration, the orientation of what we should be thinking of and looking to as we think about building better, more prosperous equitable communities. I want to acknowledge a couple of things. One, you both are amazing individuals. I highly encourage our viewers and our participants in our audience to check you out. Your social tags are there. You can Google as well and you'll find more about the work that Dr. Kendra leads at Harvard and the work that Felicia leads through Center for Black Innovation. Also, I want to thank you for bearing with us in any technical issues we might have had as we test out this new system. My colleague, Lily Weinberg, who I think had some glitches as well. So thank you for that. And lastly, before we break for the afternoon, we'll be back February 25th. So we're doing these once a month and going into the issues that are shaping our communities today. And so we hope to see you again February 25th. We'll announce kind of the topic and our guests in short order. We hope you'll be part of the conversation that really is about living in the moment, taking the long view and building more engaged, better prosperous communities across the country. Thank you so much for the time. Hope to see you all soon. Take care.