 Good morning. So I guess I'm kicking it off and just introducing myself and the company. So I'm Deshaun Amiram, CEO of Maven. We started this company in 2013. The mission of the company is to financially empower African-American hairstylists. I started this business because I had hairstylists in my family. And I noticed that by and large, we were missing out on all of the economic opportunity in the sale of all of the products associated with the hair salon. So 95% of black hair salons don't retail any products. And I wanted to change that. And so we've built a technology platform that empowers stylists to both sell products and earn commissions from them without them having to buy and hold and manage inventory, as well as built a marketplace technology on top of that that also helps customers find our stylists and book them. We've generated over $125 million of revenue in the past six years, and we have paid out over $25 million in commissions and new stylist bookings for stylists. Great. Thank you, Deshaun. Hi, I'm Keisha Cash. I can't see you all, but I know many of you. And I'm looking forward to getting to know more of you. So thank you all for attending this virtual conference. And I'm glad that we can continue the momentum during this time. So I'm Keisha Cash, founder and general partner of Impact America Fund and a proud investor in Maven. Impact America Fund focuses on investing in software and tech-driven solutions that we're empowering mainstream. And what we mean by mainstream are small businesses, consumers, workers, and we're very much focused on low and moderate income communities. So we sit at this intersection of venture capital, access to capital. My background is from Wall Street, the capital market in the community and trying to find new ways of developing systems that would allow us to not only invest in a way that creates financial returns, but also creates social impact for the communities that we care about. Thanks, Keisha. I'm Deborah Schwartz. And as Carrie said, I'm the managing director for Impact Investments at the MacArthur Foundation. I work at Private Charitable Foundation, headquartered in Chicago. And I am really pleased and proud and excited to be here with Keisha and Deshaun for this conversation. MacArthur's mission, if you listen to public radio, you might know, is to create a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. And what that means to us is that we need to reverse the inequalities that exist across our society and our world. And one of those inequalities is really all about capital. And too often, the capital that's provided by conventional banks and investors, as we just heard from Sharice in the great session just before, those conventional sources of financing fail to reach or meet the needs of our communities, and particularly communities of color, individuals, and nonprofits, as well as entrepreneurs of many kinds. So we are dedicated to trying to bridge these kinds of capital gaps. We believe that it's key to creating a more just world to expanding opportunities, unleashing innovation, and empowering all people with the financial resources that they need to thrive. So this is what led us to make impact investments starting almost 40 years ago. And recently, we were fortunate enough to be able to make an investment in Impact America. And I think it actually makes MacArthur the largest investor in the new fund. Our investment in Impact America is part of an initiative that we launched last spring. It's called the Catalytic Capital Consortium. And I invite you to our website to learn more about that. And the website is www.macfound.org. So anyhow, I am incredibly excited, as I said, about this conversation. And I'm really honored to be able to join both Kisha and Dishon. And I think with that, it's important to ask a question. So Dishon, say a little bit about how you built Maven differently, perhaps, from the traditional mold. And what has that allowed you to do? What opportunities, what risks has that posed? So I had a mentor once who told me, he said, Dishon, you're not going to make any money until you think really hard about how to make other people money. And that made concrete the idea in my mind that instead of having the mindset of how do I go find places to extract value, how can I be valuable to other people? And I think at the end of the day, that is how value creation happens is an intense focus on how you can be valuable to other people. And I think a lot of times, people can be driven with the idea that I need to go out and extract value from other places. And what can I get from other people, as opposed to really being driven by how can I deliver value to other people? And so I've come into this business with that mindset. Our core audience is hairstylists. And our driving metric and our driving KPI in the business is around income per stylist. And how are we increasing the income that every one of our stylists can make? And our hypothesis has always been the higher that we can get that number, the better retention we'll have, the better frequency we'll have, the more engagement we'll have from our stylist and our customers. And that has proven to be true. I think having a very, very customer-centric focus and value contributing focus is a forcing function for more longer-term thinking. So I think there are times, I think in a company's sort of trajectory where there's pressure, whether internal or external, let's say to grow. Investors want me to grow. I need to go raise money, so I've got to grow, especially in the world of technology and Silicon Valley. And a lot of times, some of that external pressure or some of that sentiment can cause you to have these decision-making points where I can do something that's good for the business in the short term, or I can do something that's good for my customers that will benefit the business in the long term. And I've chosen to have people around the table with me, including investors like Keisha, that have helped me to stay focused on the customer. And in times like that, and in those sort of decision making points to help me stay thinking more long term about how do I help the customer? How do we help our stylists increase their income? And that has proven to be fruitful for us in a long-term perspective. And we've now been in business for six, going on seven years. We're the leader in our space. And I think that has to do with the fact that we have been intently focused on delivering value to our stylists and our customers. Thank you for sharing that. That's a really strong story. Really on that note and on that point, Deborah, when you think about the work that Deshawn is doing and how we get more capital out to founders like Deshawn that have visions that are impactful in business models, can you speak more about the catalytic capital landscape? We're a part of this now. Curious as to the why catalytic capital and the spectrum of impact investing and what more needs to be done and how you all are thinking about catalytic capital as it relates to getting from the foundation side to entrepreneurs like Deshawn. Deshawn, thank you, Keisha. Fantastic. And it's so important to think about that chain and how we're all linked together. Because we're in the background. We're the wholesaler. We're hopefully providing capital in the right forms, the right time, the right ways. But it's your kind of intermediary, really, that takes that capital and makes impact happen. Because you're the one that is out there scouting for the entrepreneurs and making the partnerships and helping that capital get ultimately to where it's needed. So we have been doing this a long time. There has been evolution. The thing that's remained constant is that we see this need for capital that is patient, flexible, and risk tolerant. And that's what we mean by catalytic capital. It's capital that can be fit for purpose. And that is impact-driven, or as Deshawn was saying, value-driven, all about that end beneficiary. How it's innovated and involved is that really in our early years, it was all about a big focus for us from the beginning was community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, which very few folks had heard of, but all of a sudden they're kind of having a moment, even though the field has been 30 years in the building and in the making. CDFIs are all about bridging capital gaps. They're all about building a more just, equitable, and inclusive world through purposeful investing in finance. And I really see what you are doing with Impact America and what others are doing with similar kinds of funds, although there is none that is really quite as much on point as Impact America, you're really this next wave that builds and innovates even further. What CDFIs have done is shown the value of this kind of mission-driven finance. And Ford Foundation, MacArthur, and others help build them up starting in the 70s and 80s. They are something that Robert Smith recently called in some television interviews, capillary banking institution. He points to their importance because such a huge percentage of African-American neighborhoods in particular don't have a branch bank, for example. And that's why we know that the federal PPP program, the Paycheck Protection Program, for example, did so badly in reaching a lot and around communities and on non-profits. CDFIs have stepped in and they helped bridge that gap and they brought literally billions to those communities, but it is not anywhere near enough. The work continues. However, as Cherise from Next Street, a longtime partner in MacArthur just pointed out in her session, debt financing is not enough. And CDFIs have been and remain primarily focused on debt financing and it's super, super important. But we know that it's also the power of equity capital that we need. And that is what drew us, of course, to you and to Impact America and to your team's incredible vision for empowering innovative, tech-driven, high-impact entrepreneurs like Maven, like Deshaun, that are really finding this nexus between mission and money and finding ways to bring all the pieces together. So that's a little bit how we think of the arc if you were to connect the old, if you will, the old. And I wanna just acknowledge that the old continues to matter too and that continues to innovate and grow and scale even as new things have come to light. So innovation is a huge part of catalytic capital. We think it is essential for any kind of deep, lasting change in our world. And I just wanna leave with a shoutout to some amazing partners because our foundation really came into this fund in collaboration with and building on the great work and your great partnerships with so many others. Josh Mailman, the Sirdna Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, which has been an amazing leader in this space and the Ford Foundation, as well as investment platforms like Kingbridge and Barris and Trillium. These are the folks that have paved the way that have been bridging the gap. And we're excited to join in with them and really honored to be at this table. So thank you, Keshia. And I think it's back to me. I wanna turn around. So now I know why they invented moderator. So that's how MacArthur got to the table, but really this is so much about what you are doing. And it'd be great to hear you talk a little bit about why did you decide to raise and manage and impact VC fund? And what does that look like when you're successful? Yeah, and I'm gonna try to make it a very short answer so we can take questions. Many of you have heard from me at SoCAP in the past, but why impact VC and not traditional VC? We want to change the way that capital is deployed and what that means for communities of color. Our mission at Impact America Fund is to create economic agency that's really empowered and so for us, we're not on our website, we say we're not looking for the next home run while we'll certainly embrace a home run and embrace a unicorn. This is much bigger than outsize returns. It's really outsize impact and outsize transformation for black and brown communities. Sadly, our communities, regards to small businesses and workers and consumers, we're already, you think about what marginalized means, they're already on the margins prior to COVID-19 and the estimates that 30 or 40% of black and brown businesses may not require a scary. And so what does that mean and what role do we have to play as a fund that has been toward capital dollars? We have a 10 year life as a fund. So we're working over the long term to create this change and our approach is to invest in a technology solution like Maven that's now empowering 50,000 hairstyles across the country. And when you peel back the layers on what that means and these hairstyles are low income black women, what does that mean to put extra cash into the pockets of low income black women who are hairstylists? And now we're thinking, what does that mean in terms of the next generation of hairstyles? What does it look like now that we've had this hard hit economically in our community? So we, we're a small fund with a big vision, playing a very specific role of deploying capital in a way back to what Deshaun say that's not as attractive as it has been traditionally but we're really empowering, engaging the community. And we think about that, you know, across sectors for daycares, for home care, all of the sectors where black and brown people have large numbers of jobs. How do we secure those sectors and then enhance those sectors and provide additional opportunities within those sectors? Thank you, Kisha. I am really loving this conversation and all of the various pieces of it and kind of going, Kisha, to your comment just now, Deshaun, I also just kind of thinking about what's next and particularly where we are right now. Deshaun, we had a question from the audience asking, have you considered becoming a worker owner business to give workers greater power and perhaps the ability to generate more wealth? I have considered that. In fact, Kisha, Cash and I have, we have standing meetings to discuss this exact issue. There's a lot of, I think, opportunity. There's a lot of technology in different ways to structure cap tables and a lot of sort of novel ideas out there about how to do this. But we've thought through ideas such as having an equity pool that stylists can take part in. Then you have to think through, how do you dole out that equity and what metrics do you use to distribute it and how you measure it over time, et cetera, et cetera. There's also discussions around using crypto and using blockchain technologies to create coins or something else, another asset of value that can be distributed through the community. So, the devil is in the details, but this is something that we're looking at and we're certainly committed to figuring out and understanding how to do it. And I think it can be very powerful. And I think it will become very powerful in the future. And I know what I wanna add to that, per our investment in Maven, our most recent investment in Maven, we have a lot of investments in Maven, our most recent investment in Maven, Deshaun agreed to, in a side letter, per our investment that he would actively lean into, learn about and work on this, what we called an equity stylist plan, right, for a working name. And that research had started taking place before COVID. When COVID hit, priority was to just get cash, get some cash in the hands of hairstylists. And within a matter of weeks, Deshaun and Maven raised one and a half, close to one and a half million dollars, maybe 1.7 million dollars to deploy out the hairstylist. But this work was taking place. And I say that to say that it's a phased process. So, when you think about impact, the impact that a startup may have on day one looks very different when you're a seven-year-old company like Deshaun is, you have a healthy balance sheet and you have revenue and you have 50 employees and you have a board, you're able to get more creative in terms of those structures. So, we're really excited about continuing that discussion. Thank you, Kisha. That's an excellent next pieces for us to consider. I think one of the things I wanted to ask really quickly, kind of just coming along with that, is are there other strategies being deployed to ensure that black and brown businesses are able to stay around, kind of going back to what Ryan Wilson was saying yesterday, like we've got to wrap our arms around businesses right now. Can you share some of these other strategies? So, I might start and then Kisha and Dichon could add in. I mean, I think I mentioned PPP and I think it's important to know there still is money left in that federal program and those are forgivable grants. It's not an easy program, but if you have a relationship with a bank or with a CDFI in your community, Community Reinvestment Fund nationally has been doing a lot of this work. That is a source that's a more sort of immediate emergency source. It's not gonna cover expenses for months and months, but it's out there. There are funds that have been set up in Chicago, New York State, and elsewhere in the country that are providing combinations, in some cases providing grants to small businesses, prioritizing, again, communities of color that are being hard hit by the pandemic, hard hit by the economic downturn, and hard hit by the history of not having access to adequate access to capital. So there are the Small Business Resiliency Fund in Chicago, New York State announced their fund about 10 days ago. I think that's another trend that we're seeing. Again, no one thing is going to be the solution. And we definitely need the grant money that is coming from the public sector to be part of the work that gets done. Yeah, and I don't have much to add there. I just kind of go back to what we're seeing in our own portfolio and the innovation that our portfolio companies. And when you think about, we're very much focused on software and tech because you can do things at scale. We're investors in a company care academy that provides education, online training for direct care workers. 60% of direct care workers in America are low income women of color. And what does it look like to ensure that not only they properly train for their direct care work, but how do we then create economic mobility and opportunities for those care workers to have more of an integration with the healthcare system? And so it just becomes really interesting when you find entry points to large market opportunities, home care and direct care and home healthcare is very large market opportunity. Many folks are investing in the space, but they're not doing so with the home care worker, direct care worker in mind. So I think going back to what Deshaun said, regardless, we need many approaches and strategies, but those strategies have to be focused on the key stakeholder and recognize the value of that stakeholder. Maven's company is built around the value of the hairstylist. The care academy's company is being built around the value of the direct care worker. And I think I really hope that we keep that in mind as we go forward because then we're gonna see new innovative models that we haven't seen before. Absolutely. I just wanna, we have a few more minutes to this conversation. And as we move to wrapping up, I mean, there've been a ton of great comments that are happening over here in the chat and lots of other questions. So I encourage people to reach out to all three of you to continue some of the conversation that we're having because of course we just can't get it all done in this short amount of time. And I knew when we were prepping for this, each one of you could have gone, could have done this like on your own for at least an hour. So thank you so much for coming together. Curious if you can wrap us up with a kind of a final thought around your work in this area. And then as we're thinking about inclusion for today, a final thought that you can leave us for the session. Debra, do you wanna start? Dishon, I'm fine. Oh Dishon, go ahead. I think you're muted Dishon. You're on mute Dishon. I'll give my thought as Dishon and mute yourself. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I got your back, I got your back. You got me, you got me. My final thought is collaboration. I mean, these are unlikely suspects to have together and we're working together. This is not a show, this is real work behind the scenes. MacArthur has visited Dishon's office and MacArthur and I are in partnership and Dishon and I are in partnership and it requires a collaboration of good people that are mission-aligned to get this work done. So I am thankful for MacArthur and all of our partners in this in order to empower Dishon to do what he needs to do on the ground in community. I'll jump in and Dishon, can you wrap up for us? Would that be good? Okay, all right. So I would certainly echo Kisha on collaboration and as he said, we are so mindful of our fantastic partners who with whom we're partnering in the investment in Impact America and in many other ways. I guess my parting thought is that when we think about justice and we think about trying to create a world that is more just and that is so much fortunately that is on people's minds in a way now that we're seeing that we've never seen before. When we think about that we need to remember while it is only a piece capital is part of the story. We need capital that aims for justice. It cannot just be aiming for profit alone. And that is what impact investing should be about at its core. That is what catalytic capital for sure is about at its core. And I believe that is what Impact America and Maven are about is using capital to build a more just world. So that would be my parting thought. Thank you. And I think I would just say that impact and generating profits and returns generating profits and returns are not mutually exclusive things. And that in fact, if we boil it down to what makes companies great and what makes companies sustainable and last in the long run and grow it's that you're able to deliver really, really impactful value to an end customer. And some of the most impact that you could make are in ways that can actually change people's lives. And so I think that there's tremendous amount of untapped potential in terms of returns in companies that whose aim and mission is to really change and improve people's lives. There's a tremendous amount of untapped value there and returns will come with that. Absolutely. Thank you so much to all three of you for being able to take the time today and join us. We are going to bring Nadia back up to the stage here to bring us into our next portion of the day. And I just also wanna say a thank you to everyone working the chat over here and providing feedback and comments. So Nadia, over to you. Absolutely, what a wonderful conversation. We're actually going to take a bit of a break in honor of our community agreements to take care of each other and ourselves. And so we're gonna invite you to return. But when you return, you wanna return to your breakout sessions. And that's the sessions tab on the left hand side just to kind of give you a bit of a setup. There are three different breakout sessions that are intended to curate a set of concrete actionable items that can be taken up by leaders and communities towards a more equitable entrepreneurial landscape for entrepreneurs of color. So each session will be moderated by a field leader and a conversation will be guided by a facilitator who will track your actionable items. On the other side of the breakout sessions, we'll have a conversation about what we learned from those spaces. There are three different areas. One is capital allocators and it's geared towards organizations and individuals that are capital allocators. So join this conversation to focus on concrete actions on how to move more capital to founders and communities of color and what needs to change be built or created. This particular session will be facilitated by Edward Duggar, the third of Reinventure Capital and Phillip Gaskin from the Hewan Marion Kauffman Foundation. The second breakout session is focused on enterprises and it'll be moderated by Joey Womack, the founder of Amplified for Good and Felicia Hatcher-Pearson of Black Tech Week. It's geared towards companies and entrepreneurs that are focusing on those concrete steps. And then lastly, innovators. Innovators are our critical piece to our ecosystem that connect and support different sectors. And so this session will be focused on access and inclusion and will be moderated by Michelle Geiss of Impact Hub Baltimore and Mr. J. Bailey of Russell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. So we will see you back here at 1.45 p.m. Eastern, 10.45 p.m. or a.m. Pacific. Talk to you soon. It'll be a pleasure. I give a comment as far as I saw a green card. I got a card in my three of eyes. Number one, on the rest of the day, the other guy's green. That's right, let's just look at how you're on supply. This is Uncle Tom, commanding chief of your Black Freedom Fighters of North America. Bringing you the latest news from your fight in Black Underground. Liberation is near.