Employment Equity

Entrepreneurship

Start up, stay up, scale up

New Orleans is anchored in ingenuity. It ranks No. 1 in self-employment among Black people, and entrepreneurship is a gateway to jobs and wealth-building. After Hurricane Katrina, the city’s innovative entrepreneurs attracted investors. However, the mostly Black population has not benefited equitably from those investments.

Our investments support increasing access to capital and capacity-building resources for businesses led by people of color, Indigenous people and women – so they can start up, stay up and scale up.

We also support innovative equity-focused approaches that accelerate delivery of capital to entrepreneurs of color while reducing risk.

Power up

Our employment equity approaches are among the most urgent in yielding dividends for families. Many of the issues in this sector are structural. So we also support power-building, collaboration between sectors and advocacy that helps transform those systems.